
A R GROTE k M. 




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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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GENESIS MI: 



An Essay on the Bible Narrative 

of Creation. 



BY 



AUGUSTUS R. GROTE. A. M. 



A&#J3. 



NEW YORK. 
ASA K. BUTTS. 

1880. 






Copyright, 
By ASA K. BUTTS. 
1880. 






& 



To The Memoby 

OF 

Professor Clifford. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
Preface 1 

Introduction 5 

Genesis 17 

The Literary Criticism 31 

The Testimony of Archaeology 43 

Parallel Myths 53 

The Testimony of Facts 59 

Conclusion 61 



r % 



PHEFAOE 



In my studies I have consulted the following works, which 
will be found useful to the student of Genesis : 

Davidson's Introduction to the Old Testament, and Apocrypha; 
Keil, Manual of Introduction to the Old Testament ; Kuenen's 
Religion of Israel, and Bible for Learners ; Colenso on the Pen- 
tateuch ; Bleek, Introduction to the Old Testament ; Samuel 
Sharpe, History of the Hebrew Nation and Literature ; Haverick, 
Introduction to the Old Testament ; A. Geiger, Urschrift u. 
Uebers. der Bibel ; Goldziher, Mythology among the Hebrews ; 
George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, with explanation and 
continuation by Frederick Delitzsch, (German) ; Cory's Ancient 
Fragments ; H. C. Rawlinson, Essay on the Early History of 
Babylonia, in Geo. Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. I. ; J. G. von 
Herder, Aelteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechtes, and the 
same, Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit ; 
Matthew Arnold, God and the Bible. For mythological facts 
the works of Spiegel, Simrock, Max Miiller and others have been 
used. In this pa:e I take pleasure in acknowledging my in- 
debtedness to the original labors of Professor Adolf Duschak, an 
accomplished Hebrew scholar, and my teacher in the language. 

I may give here a brief notice of the historical distribution 
of the Semitic languages. To the north their boundaries were 
the Armenian Mountains, an<i a line drawn through the middle of 



PREFACE. 



the peninsula of Asia Minor ; to the east, the Tigris river ; to the 
south the Indian Ocean and the Desert of Sahara ; to the west, 
the Mediterranean. With a slight shifting this is the present dis- 
tribution. The Arabic has spread to the south far into the in- 
terior of Africa, and Egypt speaks Arabic through the influence 
of Mohammedanism. Wherever the Koran is read, Arabic is 
spoken. The Bible is read, on the contrary, in the vernacular and 
it is only the Jews who everywhere read the Old Testament in 
the Hebrew still. The name " Semitic" was first used by Eichhorn 
and is derived from Shem. It is really a misnomer, because in the 
descendants of Shem are included races that speak Aryan langua- 
ges. Shem is mythical, but the name has an ethnological sense 
which does not coincide with its linguistic value. On the other 
hand the Phoenicians and Canaanites, according to the Old Testa- 
ment, are descendants of Ham, and yet speak a Semitic tongue. 

The first branch of the Semitic languages comprises the liv- 
ing Arabic, which is a descendant of the classical Arabic, and the 
Ethiopian which is a descendant of the Himyaritic. The second 
branch is the Aramaean. Aramaic was the popular language 
in Palestine at the time of Christ. This branch embraces also 
the Syriac and the Chaldee. The Samaritan is really a mongrel 
of Hebrew and Chaldee. The third branch is the Hebrew. In 
Ezra, and Daniel are passages in Chaldee and there are some 
Chaldee words also in Genesis. Jn the Old Testament are also 
a few words, as in the Book of Kings, which have been traced 
back to the Sanscrit. With these exceptions, the Old Testament 
in written in Hebrew. 

The principal literary sources for our knowledge of these 
languages may be here cited. The Mo Allakat (i. e. the col- 
lection), the oldest collection of Arabic songs of all kinds, lyric 
and religious, dates a century before Mohammed. After this 
the Koran with its commentaries forms the chief source of our 
knowledge of this branch of the Semitic languages. In the 
Aramaic branch the sources are the Chaldee portions of Ezra 



PREFACE. 3 



and Daniel, the former dating from the beginning of the fifth 
century before Christ and the latter from the time of the Mac- 
cabees 160 B. C. For the Samaritan we have the Samaritan 
Pentateuch, which differs textually from the Hebrew in many 
points, but which has not much value, however, as a corrective of 
the Hebrew text, because the changes have a partisan and dog- 
ma' ic origin. Then we have the Syriac translation called Peshito, 
dating from the second century after Christ. We have also the 
Chaldee translation of the Old Testament of uncertain date, or 
rather of gradual growth. When the Jews returned from Babylon, 
it was the custom in the synagogues for the Reader* to read a 
Chapter of the Old Testament in the Hebrew, after which a 
regularly appointed translator rendered it into the vernacular 
Chaldee spoken by the people after the Captivity. These transla- 
tions were in many cases far from literal, the translation giving 
often merely the sense of the Hebrew text. Passages which were 
too anthropomorphic for the then mental status of the people were 
softened down, or passages which implied an opprobrium upon 
David, or other personages whom it was in the sacerdotal interest 
to exalt, were slightly altered. Gradually these translations be- 
came as stereotyped as the original text which called them forth, 
and they were, from time to time, committed to writing. The 
chief of these translations is the Targum of Onkelos, correspon- 
ding to the Greek Akilas. Then the Targum of Jonathan, corres- 
ponding to the Greek Theodoieon (i. e. God given). Then the 
Jerusalem Targum. No one of the three embraces the entire Old 
Hebrew Scriptures, but the whole together cover the Canon of 
the Old Testament. 

The sources of the third or Hebrew branch of the language 
are the Old Testament, the passage in Plautus in Phoenician, and 



* Something similar is stated by Sale to have occurred with the Koran. 
The want of vowels in the Arabic character writing made Readers absolutely 
necessary The differences in reading between these Readers occasioned 
variations in the later copies of the Koran as they came to be written with 
vowels. 



4 PREFACE. 



Phoenician monumentary inscriptions. Of the Canaauitish we 
have nothing except what few words of this dialect are found in 
the Old Testament. It may be stated, in concluding this brief 
summary, that the Semitic languages resemble each other more 
closely than do the Aryan. 

In the following translation, the words in brackets are from 
King James' version, where it differs from the one here given. In 
the transcription the apostrophe is used, where in the Hebrew the 
vocal SWva occurs. The hyphen is placed between syllables where 
the Hebrew division of syllables differs from the English. The 
vowels are to be sounded as in Italian. The letter " y " is always 
a consonant and " ch" is to be pronounced as in German. 



INTRODUCTION. 



There comes a time in the development of a Theology, when 
certain traditional beliefs begin to be doubted and then rejected 
by a constantly increasing number of its adherents. The doubt 
and the rejection are the result of more experience and more light- 
It is becoming clearly co be seen that a Theology has its phases 
of growth, during which it becomes greatly modified so far as extra- 
neous points of belief are concerned. At the bottom, the recogni- 
tion of a Power behind the things we perceive with our senses, 
underlies all Religions, the Jewish and Christian creeds included. 
All else in religious beliefs belongs finally to Science to investigate 
and to establish. In fact it is by a kind of science that dogmas 
arise. Far down they are built upon human experience, but once 
formed and hardened by time they import into a wiser generation 
the accumulated mistakes of the past. To recognize these errors 
and to endeavor to free Religion from the odium of teaching them, 
seems to me a plain duty of the intellect. 

Far is it from my thought to commit the mistake made by the 
blind upholders of Religion or its equally ill-advised opponents, of 
considering the Bible on the one hand as solidly good, or, on the 
other, as solidly bad. The Bible, besides literary excellence of the 
highest character, contains much that is in accord with our best 
nature, that comforts and sustains us in our struggle to lead a 
noble self-sacrificing life. But wo should not overlook the other 
sacrecl I^qqHs, sptirely. It will do, us good to remember that verss 



INTRODUCTION 



in the Koran, which says : " Let there be no violence in religion/' 
a verse we miss in the two testaments. And we should not forget 
that Mohammedanism has its strong side for good in ics resolute 
denunciation of idolatry and polytheism, and that on this road 
which man has made through the entangling thickets of religious 
beliefs, Islam ranks nest' to Judaism and is in so far entitled to 
our respect and regard. Indeed, there can be no doubt that the 
reversion in religion to a lower type exhibited by Mormonrsm, is 
sought to be justified by the polygamous and polytheistic element 
in the Bible. But those parts of the Bible which teach morality 
and a pure conduct it seems foolish to reject. Certainly one feels 
like taking all one can from a book like the Bible, in which we all 
have a right and which has descended, a stream of ideas and ex- 
perience, from a long past, the commingling of the flow of many 
centuries of thought. We should be tolerant of what may appear 
defects in the Bible in order to take a just attitude toward that 
book and to relieve ourselves of the charge of hasty criticism on 
one side or the other. All this does not prevent our studying the 
Bible and its origin apart from the lessons it conveys. At present 
we see how it lures the mass of people, setting before them bread 
and wine, doing them good, and then transforming them into ido- 
laters unawares. The companions of Ulysses are fabled to have 
retained their human minds in the bodies of the swine into which 
the enchantress Circe had changed them, and something like this 
is seen to happen with those who have fallen under the solid sway 
of the Bible. We know them, tender and true, under this strange 
disguise. Ah, if they could only throw it off and become reasona- 
ble as well as loving ! Matthew Arnold says, that he who would 
read his Bible to advantage must study other books as well, and 
he who only reads the Bible cannot understand it fully* 

The beautiful prayer : Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, 
Lord ! is in reality best uttered by those who are doing some- 
thing in the direction of working for light. To pray in this way 
and then to turn our backs to the light must be both stupid and 



INTRODUCTION 



wrong. We can now no longer expect the light to come from any* 
thing but right-thinking and right-acting, and our test of what is 
best in these directions must come from the knowledge we gain 
from the best books and the teachings of our experience through 
our senses. The danger of Protestantism lies in its opposition to 
the light f r which it prays. 

Some of us .seem to be contented to live less perfect lives, oc- 
cupied with the task of adapting ourselves to the immediate wants 
and conditions which surround us. Others strive to look beyond 
these and to ascertain the general drift of humanity in politics, re- 
ligion, art and science. Nothing can be more fatal to the indivi- 
dual than a mis-conception of this drift, a failure to make out 
clearly the actual condition of affairs and their nearer outcome. 
Yet these mistakes are made daily. They come from imperfect 
generalizations drawn from a misconception of the existing state of 
things. At the bottom they are the result of defective knowledge 
in the department in which they are made. But indeed something 
of all departments of human thought should be known by the man 
who attempt a generalization in any ; so many-sided are we and 
so wide is now the elbow-room we have forced ourselves into in 
this world. But every thinker works with a more or less restrict- 
ed subject matter. His ability to let new light into his subject 
depends upon his knowledge of related affairs, and his work will 
be most effectual for good when he labors to bring his particular 
subject into a correspondence with things as they are seen to be 
in other departments. 

If there is one subject which now seems to me more important 
than another, it is the bearing of our recognition of the process of 
Evolution upon the existing state of our religious creed. It is not 
that the teachings of Christ are to be rejected, or the morality of 
the Hebrew Bible to be condemned, but that we are to correct out- 
vie ws as to the way in which existing plants and animals, including 
man, came to be what they are to-day. For Astronomy and Geo- 
logy the struggle is nearly over. Out of this struggle has sprung 



INTRODUCTION. 



the fatal error of believing that our knowledge in these branches 
does not contradict Genesis or that a reconciliation is possible. But 
with Biology the struggle is now on, and before people will gener- 
ally admit, that here too development reigns, that there is not 
necessarily anything more miraculous in the first appearance of 
life on this globe than in the appearance of a rock-formation,, there 
will be much disputing, in which the Church and the social state 
must both suffer. And here too it is possible that the same mis- 
take may arise, that the words of Genesis are taken to be elastic 
to fit all discoveries, and that Bible science, in matters of natural 
history at least, is at the bottom true and inspired, only we did not 
understand it. Many like contradictions have already offered 
themselves in human experience. It is imagined that the six days 
mean really periods, although from the context the meaning is 
shown to clearly agree with the word, since the morning and even- 
ing are given to limit the term and decide the intention. It can- 
not, indeed, be too often remembered, that people did not write in 
early times what they did not mean. The reverse is found to be 
the rule and, where a different intention is contended for, the 
burden of proof lies upon the champions of the figurative and poet- 
ical sense of the tradition. When a statement becomes an allegory 
it is already ceasing to be belie red as fact. 

It will be well then' for us to place the account of Genesis 
where it belongs. As contradicting the process of gradual de- 
velopment it is well if we can view it in its real light and remove 
it, so far as it is an obstruction, from the path of knowledge. So 
long as it is taught in a bald unsesthetic way in the Sunday school 
catechisms, it is productive of great injury to the growing genera- 
tion. To read it in the Churches as a grand poetic account of the 
origin of things may still be countenanced. But there is a great 
difference between teaching a thing as literally true and reading it 
for religious edification. In one sense the world, and all that 
therein is, is a great miracle, but as to how it was brought about, 
t^e real workings of the great Force which moves all things ? of 



INTRODUCTION. 9 



all this Genesis gives an incorrect idea. When we all believed 
that things were suddenly and miraculously made, it could not 
have been immoral to teach Genesis as literal truth. But this is 
no longer so. Biology has been separated from her theological 
mother and she has taken her place as entitled to give her own 
testimony. The study of Genesis, or the origin of things, Religion 
must surrender to the Sciences because, from the very nature of 
things, Religion cannot come to any conclusion in the premises 
that can and will be fully accepted. Her kingdom is not of this 
world. 

In the following pages I have given the original and the trans- 
lation of the two first chapters of the Book of Genesis, together 
with a criticism upon them. From this 1 think it will be seen 
that those of us who have studied the matter are free to reject 
the story as a solid inspired account on its own merits. For us 
this account of the origin of things must take its rank as a fairy- 
tale, something that was pleasant to believe and arose naturally as 
the result of a limited experience, but that is no longer to be ac- 
cepted as true. One reason for its being clung to is that we part 
with old traditions slowly, because they are easier for us to handle 
mentally than the newer ideas. But it seems to me that the intel- 
lectual world is progressing in this direction and that to aid it in 
any way, however humbly and inefficiently, is praiseworthy and is 
what is needed at the present time. For the scholar needs acti- 
vity in which to work, but not confusion and bitter strife. He 
works to aid the transformation of society and ideas, so that men's 
minds may be modified without too much jarring. To day increas- 
ing knowledge is changing our conceptions more than ever upon 
once seemingly settled matters in social life and religion. And it 
is thus particularly a time for the exercise of tolerance and good 
temper so that we may offend each other as little as possible, 
neither make difficulties, nor disconcert the carriage of society. Jt 
is certainly in this spirit that the present criticism of the creation 
siory of Genesis is written. - .,.. ^ ,_,. • 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

Probably no assemblage of the white race is so unanimously 
engaged in the work of making money as we are. Our prime, 
conceit is, that he who has the most money is the greatest man. 
We value wealth rather than power, and comfort rather than right- 
thinking and right-doing. We value science chiefly for what it will 
bring in money and comfort and we make an insidious distinction 
between that knowledge which we can patent and that which has 
no immediate pecuniary result, but which in its total effects on 
our civilization is of immensely greater import, forgetting that theo- 
ries must be put forth in order to see the tendency of facts. The 
results are that we have a general low estimate of individual virtue, 
that our industrial enterprises take the form of monopolies, we are 
wasting our natural resources, our lands are falling into the hands 
of fewer owners, and our public schools into the control of ecclesi- 
astics and politicians. We do not keep in mind that the perfec- 
tion on all sides and the well-being of the individual citizen is to 
be aimed at, not the triumph of any one school in State or Church. 
But while we are so engaged in this pursuit of wealth, it is evident 
that we have less time for other matters, serious reading, serious 
observation. And so it comes to pass that in our land of political 
freedom there exists greater religious intolerance than in Germany 
or France, countries whose political institutions are less liberal 
than our own. For in this matter of religion we are seen to be 
thrown more exclusively on the different sects for advice, because we 
do not take time to attend to its efficient criticism ourselves. We 
treat religion as a matter of business to which the ministers are 
paid to attend, instead of a matter, the whole ground and super- 
structure of which we should feel bound to investigate for our- 
selves. And so it comes to pass that these things are relegated 
more entirely to the clergy, and the spectacle is presented of a 
nation, otherwise active and intelligent, quite dependent for opin- 
ions on very important subjects upon a profession which at the 
best is very conservative and at the worst very backward. The 
effect of this is felt on both parties. By an artificial protection it 
lowers the education of the clergy and helps to turn out a mass of 



INTRODUCTION. II 



preachers unfit for the ministry, and it makes the people indiffe- 
rent to the real message the Church has to carry, For the last 
quarter of a century all religious progress in America has come 
frorn.a movement in Europe. Educated Episcopalians are looking 
for the opinions of Dean Stanley, Canon Farrar and Canon Curteis. 
Those of the American Episcopal Bishops who are active in a 
literary way seem to belong to a past generation. They are resist- 
ing necessary changes and seem endeavoring to oppose in a futile 
maimer the advance of light and knowledge. But the moment 
one touches the infallibility of religion, even remotely, that instant 
one is extended upon the cross of misrepresentation. One can do 
much in other directions and escape calumny, but speak against 
animistic doctrines, even if you leave animism itself untouched, and 
you fall by the swords of your friends. Every inducement is held 
out to you to join at least in appearance the oppositer anks, and if 
you do not, you must be wary, indeed, not to be fatally set upon. 
The spectacle is over again presented, through Roman, Grecian, 
Alexandrian, mediseval and present time, of Science proving her 
case and then declaring, through the mouth of her advocate, that 
other evidence, never presented, still exists which throws her out 
of Court. All this to escape personal blame and censure and to 
appease the many votaries of the Supernatural. So it comes to 
pass that our sympathies are withdrawn from the people who sur- 
round us and the age in which we live, and are thrown out into 
the future, to the coming Man who will, we hope, be wiser and 
happier than we can ever be, and for whom we sacrifice ourselves 
and taste the pleasures of self-sacrifice. This seems to be the 
Origin of the Religion of Humanity, born because of the harshness 
and unreason surrounding us. 

One stands perforce outside of the hopes and joys of the world 
when one refuses to go with it in this matter of dogmatic belief. 
The barren pity in one's heart is refused all sympathy and ebbs 
and flows unnoticed by those for whom it is excited. So at last 
the mind becomes filled with visions of the sweeter time when 



12 INTRODUCTION. 



Christ's Kingdom shall come; the great misunderstood Kingdom 
when purity and reason will prevail, and before which all pre- 
judices will disappear. Before it can come, indeed, all selfishness 
must be banished from our souls. We must look abroad over the 
barriers of all beliefs, becoming, in a true sense, Catholic. For but 
a little while we follow the shadows about this single globe, one 
speck in the Universe, and shall we afford to spend our time in 
fighting over any mere dogma, no matter by whom propounded? 
These things lie deeper than any creed, the love of truth as we ex- 
perience it, the desire to help each other, the happiness of clear 
thought. Under all is the unseen Power whom we represent as 
having all truth, love and intelligence. To bring about the future 
reign of reason we have to abjure the flattery of the present gene- 
ration, in the hope that our efforts will assist to the coming con- 
summation, and in the knowledge that we are part in the machinery 
of evolution which must work through greater good toward per- 
fection. 

There seems to be no accredited method of expressing the best 
views in art, science, and letters in America, no criterion to guide 
the formation of a proper public opinion. All this leads to intellec- 
tual separatism, to the forming of churches,cliques, clubs, and socie- 
ties without any way of arriving at a test and comparison of their 
results. An appeal is made, from time to time, to the public, but 
the public seems to support a split on general principles and has a 
savage taste for personalities irrespective of the merits of the ques- 
tion. The. surrender of ourselves wholesale to the occupation of 
money-getting leads to this result and the elementary education we 
obtain in the public schools is not enough to correct the evil. What 
is at this time seriously demanded is higher schools, so that the 
people may be liberalized. Our political constitution favors hete- 
rodoxy in religion, and it is becoming a matter of individual 
churches and ministers. To all this one need not object, only the 
new schisms do not seem to have Christ, or a truly religious prin- 
ciple, or reason as their basis, so much as certain peculiar views 



.INTRODUCTION. 13 



and personalities. The strength of all the churches, outside of the 
Roman Catholic, is being sapped by the infidelity of the clergy to 
Christ's teachings and their blindness to the real progress of af- 
fairs. Instead of preaching Christ crucified, they are generally 
giving bad lectures on science. Perhaps the time is nearer than 
they think for, when they will appear (as Burke says in reference 
to changes in human affairs) to resist the decrees of Providence it- 
self rather than the mere designs of men. They will then not seem 
resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate. They are already 
losing hold of the best educated and fairest people. In conse- 
quence, there is a greater estrangement between men of science 
and the Protestant Churches than there need to be. Any such es- 
trangement must be injurious to the conditions of social life in the 
country. 

Again, a grave question comes up here for the consideration 
of the moralist, and more or less interested in morals we all most 
certainly are. We have shown elsewhere * that our sympathy is 
extending beyond the narrow bounds of nationalities, races and 
creeds. We are entering into wider moral relations than ever be 
fore in the history of our species. Does not a fixed belief in such 
a statement as that in Genesis interrupt this moral progress by 
interposing itself as an obstacle between ourselves and those alien 
to it ? It would seem impossible but that it should do so, and cer- 
tainly a belief in it prevents perfect understanding among ourselves 
as a race or nation. It cannot be objected to this that all should 
believe in Genesis ; because that is clearly impossible, and the 
tendency is seen to be in the other direction and that it should take 
its place among the mental fancies that we can no longer entertain 
as serious. 

Thinking in this way, I have made the present criticism on 
the account of creation in Genesis, because I hope it may lead to 



An International Scientific Service, Poc. Am Ass. Adv.-Sci. 1877, 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

less dogmatic assertion on the subject on the part of the clergy 
into whose hands it may fall and thus prevent them from giving 
unnecessary offence.* Kuenen says : " People have wearied them- 
selves in vain in the effort to reconcile the story which opens the 
Bible, with what men of science tell us. All kinds of crooked 
ways to this end have been tried, and that not only in learned 
books and in dry technical treatises, but in popular works : such 
as Hugh Miller's " Testimony of the Rocks." The more talent 
this and other works display and the more charmingly they are 
written, the more must we lament that their authors have made 
all their powers subservient to the hopeless task of reconciling the 
account of the creation in the Bible first chapter of Genesis with 
the results of scientific study ; for it is impossible to gain even the 
appearance of success without doing injustice both to the biblical 
narrative and to the scientific discoveries." 

The mistake made by listening to these ill-advised writers 
who are forever "reconciling" the facts of Science with the ac- 
counts in the Bible, has its own fruits in the disorganized condi- 
tion of most people's minds on this subject. In the nature of 
things, the account of Genesis could not be the true one, and if 
we cease to teach it as exact, but realize that it was originally in- 
tended to be so, we will be doing what we can to keep society 
peaceful and to ensure the healthy progress of both our religious 
and political institutions. 



* Bible for Learners. Boston, Roberts Bros., page 47. 



GENESIS. 



GENESIS. 



CHAPTER I. 



1. B'reshith bara Elohim eth 1. In the beginning created 
hashshamayim v'eth ha-aretz. Elohim (God) the heaven and 

the earth. 



2. Vh'a-aretz ha-y'thah tho- 
hu va-bhohu, v'choshech al 
p'nay th' horn, v'ru-aeh Elohim 
m'rachefeth al p'nay hammayim. 



3. Vayyonier Elohim : Y'hee 
Or v&yy'hee or. 

4. Vayyar Elohim eth ha-or 
kee tobh vayyabhdel Elohim 
bain ha-or u-bhain hachoshech. 



2. And the earth was empty 
(without form) and void and 
darkness (was) upon the face 
of the deep and the spirit of 
Elohim (God) hovered (moved) 
upon the face of the waters. 

3. And Elohim (God) said : 
Let there be light, and there 
was light. 

4. And Elohim (God) saw 
the light, that it was good, and 
Elohim distinguished between 
the light and the darkness. 

; (God divided the light from the 
darkness.) 



18 



GENESIS. 



5. Yayyikra Elohim la-or 
yom v'lachoshech kara lay'lah, 
vayy ? hee airebh vayy'hee boker 
yom echad. 



6. Yayyomer Elohim : Y'hee 
rakee-ah b'thoch hammayim, ve- 
y'hee mabhdil bain mayim la- 
mayim. 



?. Yayya-as Elohim eth-ha- 
ra-kee-ah vayyabhdel bain ham- 
mayim asher mittachath hara- 
kee-ah ubhain hammayim asher 
may-al larakee-ah vayy'hee 
chain. 



8. Yayyikra Elohim lara- 
e-ah shamayim Yayy'hee ai- 
rebh vayyhee boker yom shainee. 



kee 



9. Yayyomer Elohim yik- 
kovu hammayim mittachath 
hashshamayim el-makom echod 
v'thaira-eh hayyabbashah vayy'- 
hee chain. 

10. Yayyikra Elohim layyab- 



5. And Elohim (God) called 
the light day and the darkness 
he called night, and it was 
evening and it was morning, one 
day. (And the evening and the 
morning were the first day.) 

6 And Elohim (God) said: 
Let there be an expanse (firma- 
ment) in the midst of the waters 
and let it be a division (let it 
divide) between the waters and 
waters (the waters from the 
waters). 

7. And Elohim (God) made 
the expanse (firmament) and 
distinguished between (divided) 
the waters which (were) be- 
neath (under) the expanse (fir- 
mament) and (from) the water 8 
which (were) above the expanse 
(firmament) and it was so. 

8. And Elohim (God) call- 
ed the expanse (firmament) 
heaven. And it was evening 
and it was morning a second 
day. (And the evening and the 
morning were the second day.) 

9. And Elohim (God) said : 
Let the waters under the heaven 
be gathered in (unto) one place 
and let dry (land) appear and 
it was so. 

10. And Elohim (God) call- 



GENESIS. 



19 



bashah airetz lil'mikvaih ham- 
mayin kara yammim Vayyar 
Elohim kee tobh. 



11. Vayyomer Elohim tad- 
shaih ha- aretz daishay, aysebh 
mazriah zerah aitz p'ree osaih 
p'ree l'meeno asher zar'oh bho 
al ha-aretz vayy'hee. chain. 



12. Vattotzay ha-aretz dai- 
shay aisebh mazriah zerah l'mee- 
naihu v'aitz osaih p'ree asher 
zai'oh bho Fmeenaihu vayyar 
Elohim -kee tobh. 



13. Vayy'hee airebh vayy'hee 
boker yom sh'leeshee. 

14. Vayyomer Elohim Y'hee 
m'oroth barakee-ah hashsha- 
mayim Phabhdeel bain hayyom 
ubhain halla-y'lah, v'hayu Po- 
thoth ul'mo-adim, uPyamim 
v'shanim. 



15-. V'hayu lim'oroth bara 



ed the dry (land) earth and the 
gathering (together) of the 
water (sj he called seas, and 
Elohim (God) saw (that) it was 
good. 

11. And Elohim (God) said : 
Let the earth send (bring) 
forth grass, (the) herb yielding 
seed, (the) fruit tree yielding 
fruit after its (his) kind whose 
seed is in it (self) upon the 
earth, and it was so. 

12. And the earth brought 
forth grass (and) herb yielding 
seed after its (his) kind and 
(the) tree, making (yielding) 
fruit whose seed (was) in it 
(self) after its (his) kind, and 
Elohim (God) saw (that) it 
was good. 

13. And it was (the) even- 
ing and it was (the) morning 
a (were the) third day. 

14. And Elohim (God) said : 
Let there be lights in the ex- 
panse (firmament) of the 
heaven to distinguish between 
(to divide) the day and between 
(from) the night and they shall 
be (let them be) for signs and 
seasons, and for days and years. 

15. And they shall be (let 



20 



GENESIS 



kee-ah hashshamayim Pha-eer al them be) for lights in the ex- 
ha-aretz vayy'hee chain. panse (firmament) of the heaven 

to give light upon the earth, 

and it was so. 



16. Yayya-as Elohim eth- 
shnay hamm' oroth hagg'dolim 
eth hammaor haggadol Pmem- 
sheleth hayyom v'eth hammaor 
hakkaton Pmemsheleth halla-y'- 
lah v'aith hakka-chabhim. 

11. Vayyitten otham Elohim 
bir'kee-ah hashshamayim Pha- 
eer al ha-aretz. 



18. Y^limshol bayyom ubhal- 
]a y 'lah ul'habhdeel bain ha'or 
ubhaim hachoshech vayyar Elo- 
him kee tobh. 



19. Vayy'hee airebh vayy'hee 
boker yom r'bhee-eeh. 

20. Yayyomer Elohim Yish- 
r'tzu hammayim sheretz nefesh 
chayyah v'of y'ofef alha-aretz, 
al p'nay rakee-ah hashshamay- 
im. 



16. And Elohim (God) made 
the two (two) great lights, the 
great (greater) light to rule the 
day and the small (lesser) light 
to rule the night, and the stars 
(he made the stars also). 

17. And Elohim (God) set 
them in the expanse (firmament) 
of the heaven to give light upou 
the earth, 

18. ( -V) and to rule over the 
day and over the uight and to 
distinguish (to divide) between 
the light and between (from) 
the darkness. And Elohim 
(God) saw (that) it was good. 

19. And it was (the) evening 
and it was (the) morning a 
(were the) fourth day. 

20. And Elohim (God) said : 
Let the waters abound with 
(bring forth abundantly) creep- 
ing (the moving) creature living 
(that hath life) and fowl shall 
fly (that may fly) above the 
earth in the face (in the open) 
of the expanse (firmament) of 
heaven. 



GENESIS. 



21 



21. Yayyibhra Elohim eth- 
hattanninim hag g'dolirn v'eth 
kol nefesh ha- chayyah harome- 
seth osher shortzu hammayim 
Fmeenai-hem v'aith kol ofkanaf 
Fmeenaihu, vayyar Elohim kee 
tobh. 



22. Vayy'bharech otham 
Elohim laiinor, p'ru ur'bhu u- 
mil'u eth- hammayim bayyam- 
mim v'ha-of yirebh ba-aretz. 



23. Vayy'hee airebh vayy ; 
boker yom chameeshee. 



'hee 



24. Yayyomer Elohim totzay 
ha-aretz nefesh chayyah l'mee- 
na'h, b'haimah varemes 

v'chayy'tho airetz Pmeena'h 
vayy'hee chain. 



25. Vayya-as Elohim eth- 
chayyath ha-aretz Fmeena'h 
v'eth habb'haimah Fmeen;i ? h 
v'aith kol-remes ha-ada-mah 
l'meenaihu vayyar Elohim kee 
tobh. 



26. Vayyomer Elohim na-aseh 



21. AndElohim (God) creat- 
ed the great sea-monsters 
(whales) and every living crea- 
ture that creeps (moveth) which 
the waters brought forth abun- 
dantly after their kind and 
every winged fowl after its (his) 
kind. And Elohim (God) saw 
(that) it was good. 

22. AndElohim (God) bless 
ed them saying, be fruitful and 
multiply and fill the waters in 
the seas and the fowl shall (let) 
multiply upon (in) the earth. 

23. And it was (the) even- 
ing and it was (the) morning a 
(were the) fifth day. 

24. And Elohim (God) said : 
Let the earth produce (bring 
forth) living creature after its 
(his) kind, cattle and creeping 
thing and the beast of the earth 

after its (his) kind, and it was 
so. 

25. x\nd Elohim (God) made 
the beast of the earth after its 
(his) kind and the cattle after 
their kind and every thing that 
creeps upon the ground (earth) 
after its (his) kind. And Elo- 
him (God) saw (that) it was 
good. 

26. And Elohim (God) said : 



22 



GENESIS. 



adam b'tzalmainu, kidmuthai- 
nu v'yirdu bhidgath hayyam 
ubh'of hashshamayim ubhab'- 
h aim ah ubhchol ha-aretz ubh- 
chol ha-remes ha-romes al ha- 
aretz. 



27. Vayyeebhra Elohim eth- 
ha adam b'tzalmo b'tzelem Elo- 
him bara otho, zachar un'kai- 
bhah bara otham. 



Let us make man in our 
image, after our likeness and let 
them have dominion over the fish 
of the sea, and over the fowl of 
the heaven and over the cattle, 
and over all the earth and, over 
every creeping thing that creeps 
(creepeth) upon the earth. 

21. (So) Elohim (God) creat- 
ed the man (man) in his (own) 
image, in the image of Elohim 
(God) created he him, male and 
female created he them. 



28. Vayybharech otham Elo- 
him vayyomer lahem Elohim 
p'ru ur'bhu umiPu eth-ha-aretz 
v'chibhshuha ur'du bidgath hay- 
yam ubh'of hashshamayim ubh'- 
chol chayyah haromeseth al-ha- 
aretz. 



29. Yayyomer Elohim hinnaih 
nathatti lachem eth-kol-aisebh 
zore-ah zerahasher al p'nay kol- 
ha-aretz v 7 eth-kol-ha-aitz asher- 
bo p'ree aitz zore-ah zerah la- 
chem yeeh'yu Fachlah. 



28. And Elohim (God) bless- 
ed them and Elohim (God) said 
(un) to them, be fruitful and 
multiply and fill (replenish) the 
earth and subdue it, and have 
dominion over the fish of the 
sea, and over the fowl of the 
heaven (air) and over every liv- 
ing thing that creeps (moveth) 
upon the earth. 

29. And Elohim (God) said : 
Behold I have given to you 
every herb bearing seed, which 
is upon the face of all the earth, 
and every tree in which is the 
fruit of a tree-bearing (yielding) 
seed to you it shall be for food 
(meat), 



30. UPchol-chayyath ha-aretz 30. And to every beast of the 



GENESIS. 



23 



uPchol-of hashshamayim ul'chol 
roraes al-ha-aretz asher-bo ne- 
fesh chayyah eth-kol-yairek ai- 
sebh Pachlah vayy' hee chain. 



31. Tayyar Elohim eth kol 
asher asah, v'hinnay tobh m'od 
vayy'hee airebh vayy 'hee boker 
yom hashshishshee. 



earth and to every fowl of the 
heaven (air) and to every thing 
creeping (that creepeth) on the 
earth, in which there is a living 
soul (life) every green herb for 
food (I have given) and it was 
so. 

31. And Elohim (God) saw 
everything that he had made and 
behold it was very good. And 
it was (the) evening and it was 
(the) morning a (were the) 
sixth day. 



CHAPTER II. 



1. Vayy'chullu hashshamayim 
v'ha-aretz v'chol-tz'bha-am. 

2. Vayy'chal Elohim bayyom 
hash-shbhee-ee m'lachto asher 
asah vayyishboth bayyom hash- 
bhee-ee mikkol-m'lachto asher 
asak 

3. Yayy'bharech Elohim eth- 
yom bashshbhee-ee vayy'kadesh 
otho kee bho shabhath mikkol- 
m'lach-to asher bara Elohim la- 
asoth. 



1. (Thus) And the heaven 
and the earth were finished and 
all their host (of them). 

2. And Elohim (God) ended 
on the seventh day his work, 
which he had made and he rest- 
ed on the seventh day from all 
his work which he had made. 

3. And Elohim (God) bless- 
ed the seventh day and sanctifi- 
ed it, for on it (because that in 
it) he (had) rested from all his 
work which Elohim (God) 
created to make it (and made). 



24 



GENESIS. 



End of the first or Elohistic account of the creation. With 
the fourth verse of the second chapter begins the second or 
Yah vis tic account. 



4. Aileh thoPdoth hashsha- 
rnayim v'ha-aretz b'hibbar-am 
b'yom asos Yahveh Elohim 
airetz v'shamayim. 



5. V'chol si-ach hassadaih 
terem yihyaih ba-aretz v'chol 
aisebh ha-sadaih terem yitzmach 
kee lo himteer Yahveh Elohim 
al-ha-aretz v'adarn ayin la-abhod 
eth-ha-a'darnah. 



6. Y'aid ya-alaih minha-aretz 
v'hishkah eth kol-p'nay ha-a'da- 
mah. 

7. Yayyeetzer Yahveh Elo- 
him, eth-ha-adam afar min ha- 
adamah vayyippach b'appav 
nishmath chayyim vayy hee ha- 
adam Pnefesh chayyah. 

8. Yayyitta Yahveh Elohim 
gan b'aiden mikkedem vayyasem 



4. These are the generations 
of the heaven and the earth at 
their being created (when they 
were created) on the day that 
Yahveh Elohim (the Lord God) 
made (the) earth and (the) 
heavens. 

5. And every plant of the 
field was not yet (before it was) 
on the earth and every herb of 
the field had not yet sprouted 
(before it grew) for Yahveh 
Elohim (the Lord God) had not 
caused it to rain upon the earth 
and man was not yet (there was 
not a man) to till the ground. 

6. And a mist was rising 
( T ^ut there went up a mist) 
from the earth and watered the 
whole face of the ground. 

7. And Yahveh Elohim (the 
Lord God) formed the man (man) 
ot the dust of the ground and 
breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life and the man (man) 
became a living soul. 

8. And Yahveh Elohim (the 
Lord God) planted a garden in 



GENESIS. 



25 



sham eth-ha-adara asher yatzar. 



Eden towards the east (east- 
ward in Eden) and there he put 
the man he had formed. 



9. Vayatzmach Yahveh Elo- 9. And out of the ground 
him min ha-adamah kol-aitz made Yahveh Elohim (the Lord 
neehmad Pmar aih v'tobh l'ma- God) to grow every tree (that 
achal v'aitz hachayyim b'thoch is) pleasant to the sight and good 
hag-gan v'aitz hadda-ath tobh for food and the tree of life 
vara. (also) in the midst of the garden 

and the tree of knowledge of 
good and evil. 

10. V'nahar yotzay mai-aiden 10. And a river went out of 
Thash-koth eth-haggan ummi- Eden to water the garden and 
sham yippa-red v'hayah Parba- from thence it was parted and 
ah roshim became into four heads. 



11. Shaim ha-echad Peeshon 
hu hassobhebh aith kol eretz ha- 
chaveelah asher sham hazzahabh. 



12. Uz'habh ha-arets hahee 
tobh sham habb'dolach v'aibhen 
hashshoham. 

13. V'shaim hannahar hash 
shainee Gichon, hu hassobhebh 
eth-kol-eretz Kush. 



14. V'shaim hannahar hash- 
shl ee she e Chid dekel hu haholech 
kidmath Ashshur, v'hannahar 



11. The name of the first is 
(Pison) the Indus (that is it 
which compasseth) it is he that 
surrounds the whole land of 
(Havilah) India where the gold 
is (there is gold). 

1 2. And the gold of that land 
is good there is bdellium and 
the onyx-stone. 

13. And the name of the sec- 
ond river is (Gihon) the Nile, 
he it is that surround (the same 
it is that compasseth) the whole 
land of Ethiopia. 

14. And the name of the third 
river is (Hiddekel) Tigris, it is 
he which geos (that is it which 



26 



GENESIS. 



harbhee-ee hu Prath. 



15. Yayyikkach Yahveh Elo 
him eth-ha adatn vayyanneechai- 
hu bhgan Aiden Fabhda'h ul- 
shamra'h. 



16. Vayytzav Yahveh Elo- 
him al-ha-adam laimor mikkol 
aitz haggan achol tochail. 



goeth) towards the east of Assy- 
ria and the fourth river is the 
Euphrates. 

15. And Yahveh Elohim (the 
Lord God) took the man and 
put him into the garden of Eden 
to work (to dress it) and to 
keep it. 

16. And Yahveh Elohim (the 
Lnrd God) commanded the man 
(saying) : Of every tree of the 
garden thou mayest eat (freely) : 



17. Umai-atz hadda-ath tobh 17. But of the tree of (the) 
va-ra lo tochal mimmennu kee knowledge of good and evil thou 
b'yom achalcha mimmennu moth shalt not eat of it, for in the day 
ta-muth. of thy eating from it (that thou 

eatest thereof) thou shalt surely 

die. 



18. Yayyomer Yahveh Elo- 
him lo tobh he'yoth ha-adam 
Pbhaddo ai-esaih lo aizer kneg- 
do. 



19. Vayyitzer Yahveh Elo- 
him min ha-adamahkol chayyath 
hassadaih v'aith kol of hashsha- 
mayim vayyabhai el ha-adam 
lir'oth ma-yikra-lo v'chol asher 
yikra-lo ha-adam nefesh chay- 
yah hu sh'mo. 



18. And Yahveh Elohim (the 
Lord God) said : It is not 
good that the man should be 
alone, I shall (will) make him 
an help meet for him. 

19. And out of the ground 
Yahveh Elohim (the Lord God) 
formed every beast of the field 
and every fowl of the heaven 
(air) and brought (them) before 
the man (unto Adam) to see 
what he would call it (them) 
and what (so) ever the man 
(Adam) would call (called 



GENESIS. 



27 



every) a living soul (creature) 
that was its name (the name 
thereof). 

20. Vayyikra ha-adam shai- 20. And fAdam) the man 
moth 1-chol habb' haimah u'Pof gave names to all cattle and to 
hashshamayim u'Pchol chayyath the fowl of the heaven (air) and 
hassadaih uPadam lo matza to every beast of the field, but 
aizer knegdo. for (Adam) man he found not 

(there was not found) an help 

meet for him. 



21. Yayyappail Yahveh Elo- 
him tardaimah al ha-adam, vay- 
yishan vayyikkach achath mitzal 
othav vayyisgor basar tachten- 
nah. 



22. Yayyibhen Yahveh Elo- 
him eth hatzaila asher lakach 
minha-adam Pishshah 
bhee-aiha el-ha-adam. 



vayy' 



23. Yayyomer ha-adam zoth 
happa-am aitzem mai-atzamee 
ubhasar mibhsaree lzoth yikka- 
raylshshah kee mai-eesh lukka- 
chah zoth. 



21. And Yahveh Elohim (the 
Lord God) caused a deep sleep 
to fall upon (Adam) the man, 
and he slept and he took one of 
his ribs and closed up (the) 
flesh in its place (in stead there- 
of). 

22. And Yahveh Elohim 
made the rib, which he had 
taken from the man, a woman 
and brought her to the man. 
(And the rib which the Lord 
God had taken from man, made 
he a woman and brought her 
unto the man.) 

23. And the man (Adam) 
said this time (this is now) it is 
bone of my bones and flesh of 
my flesh, she shall be called 
Woman, because she was taken 
out of Man. 



24. Al kain ya'azob eesh eth 24. Therefore shall (a) man 



28 



GENESIS. 



abheev v'eth immo vMabhak 
b'ishto, v'hayu Pbhasar echad. 

25. Yayyeeh'yu shnaihem aru 
mim, ha-adam v'ishto v'lo yith- 
boshashu. 



leave his father and his mother 
and (shall) cleave to his wife and 
they shall be one. flesh. 

25. And they were both 
naked, the man and his wife, 
and were not ashamed. 






THE LITERARY CRITICISM. 



w 



THE 



LITERARY CRITICISM. 



In the foregoing translation it will be observed that the name 
of the Deity has been transcribed, not according to the punctu- 
ation, Jehovah, but according to the reading adopted by most 
scholars Yahveh; which, if not absolutely the correct form, is 
certainly more in accordance with Hebrew etymology than 
Jehovah, which was only adopted by the blunder of an ignorant 
transcriber into Greek (cf. an essay on 'that point at the end 
of Yol. II. of Ewald's History of Israel). In the translation 
it was thought advisable to use Elohim and Yahveh- Elo him 
instead of "God" and "the Lord God," because in the first 
place the plural termination "im" of the word Eloh-im, is lost 
in the English, (" Gods" would not translate it correctly), secondly, 
our English term " God," is not a translation of Elohim, but 
merely a subscitate ; the Hebrew word meaning " the fearful 
one," or, according to some etymologists, the " powerful one." 
In the third place the appellation of the Deity in the various 
parts of the Pentateuch is one of the chief indices by which 
to distinguish the various documents out of which it is com- 
posed. The name of Yahveh was left untranslated because it 
cannot be translated. It is a proper name from the ancient 
Hebrew root " Havah," foi-rag-; but like Jupiter, or Zeus, it has 
lost its adjective power and has become stereotyped as a proper 
name, the name of the national God of the Israelites. The 



32 THE LITERARY 



best evidence we find of this is in Ex., YI. 14, where the verse 
closes with the words, " and my name Yahveh I have not made 
known to them,' 7 and in First Kings, XVXJL, 21, Elijah adresses 
the people in a harangue, where he proposes to test the power 
of the national gods and says : '' If Yahveh is the powerful one, 
follow him, and if Baal, follow him," and throughout the whole 
transaction we find Yahveh, and Baal placed in opposition as 
two personalities, claiming a certain title, one of which was 
named Baal and the other Yahveh. The English word "Lord" 
translates the term Adonai, which the Israelites substitute for 
Yahveh, as that holy name was declared by priestly authority 
unpronounceable. Another important deviation from the author- 
ized version is that ha-adam is consistently translated "the 
man" throughout, whereas the authorized version, from Gen. 
II., 19, to the end of the history of the first man, uses the proper 
name " Adam," for which there is no warrant whatever, as the 
Hebrew word is the same as before. The reasons of King 
James's translators . were undoubtedly doctrinal, and these can 
ha7e no weight in true criticism. Other minor differences need 
not be specified, since they ' are often modernizations of the 
obsolete forms of the version. They have all been made for the 
sake of accuracy, not forgetting that, with many people, early 
influences have invested the antiquated English of the Version 
with a certain sacredness, which dims the impartial judgment 
and prevents the reader from applying to Holy Writ, the cri- 
tical acumen, and also the candor with which books, not in- 
vested with such sacredness, are read and criticised. 

If we now turn to the contents of the above text and trans- 
lation, we wonder how they ever could have been conceived 
to be one continuous narrative. That we have there two dis- 
tinct narratives of the Creation would never have been doubted, 
had they been found inserted in any other ancient book. They 
differ in almost every particular, in the arrangement, in the 
facts, in the name of tht' Deity, in their object and, lastly, in the 



CRITICISM. 33 



language used. The different arrangements of the two accounts 
need hardly be pointed out. In the first account we have an 
orderly progression, a subdivision of the whole drama into acts. 
After each act, occupying a day, the curtain drops ; the work 
must have been done in the night, as the day begins with the 
evening, although we are somewhat puzzled to understand how 
the author Gould have imagined " evening and morning " before 
the creation of the sun. The author by the term "yoin" 
meant a "day," in the common acceptance of the word and all 
attempts to give the term a wider significance are futile. The 
term "yoni" is never used otherwise than to designate the 24 
hours, except where it is used in contrast with "la'ylay" night, 
then it means the period of daylight. The plural " Yamim " 
is occasionally used for il times," but even in the Talmud it is 
laid down as a rule of interpretation, that the figurative em- 
ployment of a word, does not deprive it of its natural and lite- 
ral meaning. Besides we find in Ch. I., 14, the word " u' 
lyamim," " and for days," in contrast with the following term 
" v'shanim," " and years." And lastly we have that unanswera- 
ble, though almost threadbare reference to Ch. II., 3, where 
Elohim blessed the " seventh day," because he rested on that day 
from his labor. The second account, on the other hand, be- 
ginning Ch. II. , 4, has no division of time at all, nor is there 
any orderly subdivision of events ; all events are only told 
with reference to one central fact, the creation of man. A 
comparison of the facts narrated in each shows the following 
differences. The first account begins with Chaos, as in the 
Greek Cosmogony, the first differentiation being between light 
and darkness on the first day. The second day brings about 
the division between heaven and earth. On the third, land 
appears. The second account opens with -the earth as a dry 
arid plain without vegetation and animal life. In the first 
account the earth is made to produce the herbs bearing seed 
and the trees bearing fruit with seed, independently of rain and 



34 THE LITERARY 



human interference. In the second account the herb of the field 
does not grow until it has rained and man has tilled the ground, 
though we are not told whence he obtained the seed to plant, 
nor how the uncultivated plants originated. Man, however, ap- 
pears first on the ground, while in the first account he is the 
last object of creation. In this # act itself a variety of diver- 
gencies may be noted. In the first account man is made in the 
image of Elohim, in the second no mention is made of his 
11 god-likeness," on the contrary we find that it was quite 
against the will of the Deity that he should become so. And 
after he had become so by the advice of the serpent and the 
curiosity of Eve, he is driven from the Garden of Eden for, 
says Yahveh Elohim (Ch. III., 22,) " Behold the man has be. 
come like one of us to know good and evil," exactly as the 
serpent bad forer-old in the same chapter (verse 5)-: "for Elo- 
him knows that on the day of your eating therefrom, your eyes 
will be opened and you will be like Elohim knowing good and 
evil. 7 ' In Chapt. II., 21, man is created male and female. In 
the second account woman appears only after a surgical opera- 
tion. In the first account the birds appear on the fifth day, 
the wild beast and domesticated cattle at the beginning of the 
sixth day, after which follows the creation of man, male and 
female. In the second account Adam is first made alone in a 
manner to which we find no reference in the first account. Then 
the " beast of the field and the fowls of the Heaven " are made 
by Yahveh Elohim from the ground before woman is created. 
Mark also, that first beasts and then fowls are made by Yahveh 
Klohim himself out of the ground, in the same way as Man ; 
but in the first account the fowls are produced at command 
on the fifth day out of the water, and beast and cattle are 
brought forth by the earth on the sixth day. The first ac- 
count • knows nothing of the garden of Eden, of the four 
rivers, of forbidden fruit, of the naming process and of matri- 
mony. The second does not mention the creation of heavenly 



CRITICISM. 35 



bodies, of the fishes, and "whales" and of creeping things. It 
knows nothing of " festive seasons" and of the Sabbath. in 
the first account Man is given unlimited control over the whole 
earth and all animal creation, in the second he is simply the 
gardener of Eden. The next important difference between the 
two accounts is the employment of different appellations for the 
Deity. ' The first account uses throughout the term " Elohiin," 
rendered " God " in the common version, and the second uses 
" Yahveh Elohim," rendered "the Lord God." This fact has in- 
duced many Bible critics to call the first account Elohistie and 
the second Yahvistic and, taken together 1 with the differences 
pointed out above, there cannot be the least doubt that we 
have here the work of two different authors of different local- 
ities. And we may also, through these names for the Deity, 
find the key to the motives of the two writers. The first account 
was probably committed to writing by an Israelite belonging 
to the northern tribes, of which the tribe of Ephraim was the 
most powerful. Among these tribes the worship of Yahveh 
was not introduced until the time of King Josiah, of the south- 
ern kingdom. All passages that give prominence to Joseph 
and his descendants are Elohistie, while the passages which 
detail the ritual of the tabernacle or temple, the office of the 
priests and Levites, which give prominence to the tribe of 
Judah, are Yahvistic, and must have had a Levite as their 
author. To the Yahvistic account belongs the history of the 
Exodus and hence we find that the same writer refers all fes- 
tivals of the Israelites back to that event, and in Deuteronomy 
V., 15, we read: " And thou shalt remember that thou wasl 
a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahveh, thy God brought 
thee out from thence with a strong hand and with an out- 
stretched arm, therefore Yahveh thy God commanded thee to keep 
the Sabbath day." Here we find even the Sabbath based on the 
Exodus from Egypt. Deuteronomy was undoubtedly composed 
under Josiah, 640-609, B.C. 



36 THE LITERARY 



In the first account we find the Sabbath based on the 
cessation of creation and it seems that it is for this very 
reason that the whole account was written, to give to the 
celebration of the Sabbath a foundation in the worship of Elohim. 
As was the case with most of the holy days, so also with the 
Sabbath. It was converted from a heathenish festival in honor 
of a tutelary Deity, whose day was the same that among the 
Romans was under the care of Saturn. The subdivision of the 
year into periods of seven days existed among the Egyptians, 
the Assyrians and among all the Zabeans or worshippers of 
the heavenly bodies. The Hebrews undoubtedly were such in 
the early stages of their development, as evidence we have the 
word "Shabbah" to swear, from the root " Shebhah " seven, i e., 
swearing meant to call the seven stars or gods to witness. Nay, 
we find even the Prophet Amos, Y. 26, reproaching them with 
worship of "Keeyun" or Saturn. The Mosaic authorship of 
the first account is therefore out of the question, since he was 
in the first place a Levite and hence a worshipper of Yahveh ; 
and secondly, the Israelites worshipped the stars in the wilderness, 
their festivals there being certainly all heathenish or connected 
with their stellar deities. If we may be allowed to conjecture 
we would assign the composition of the first account of Genesis, 
in its present state, to a period posterior to Jeroboam, or 
the firm establishment of the northern kingdom of Israel with 
Ephraimite predominance. The source from which he derived 
his information, or the earliest crystallization of the six days' 
tradition, we shall afterwards find in the valley of Mesopotamia. 

The second, or Yahvistic, account has a different object 
in view. When it was committed to writing, the priestly do- 
minion must have been already very pronounced. For it is a 
characteristic of all those ancient races which were priestridden, 
as the Indians, Egyptians and Assyrians, that the sinfulness 
of man, the insufficiency of human reason, forms one of the funda- 
mental doctrines of their theologies. Ordinary people were not 



CRITICISM. 37 



considered clean or holy enough to commune directly with 
the Deity. Hence the necessity of a priestly class to serve 
as mediators, or representatives of the people before the Deity 
and as agents of the Deity in his dealings with mankind. Hence 
we find in the cosmogony and anthropogony of these races 
a downward development from a golden age to an epoch 
of corruption, after which the priest steps in and saves 
mankind by his intercession. The account we have before us 
begins with " our grand parents, in that happy state favored of 
Heaven so highly," but ultimately we hear Yahveh declare 
(Gen. VI., 5,) '' that the wickedness of map was great upon 
the earth, and the instinct of the imaginations of his heart 
was only evil day by day." Such a belief, accepted upon 
the authority of Yahveh, could only be promulgated when 
Yahveh had provided means for his propitiation, i.e., when 
there existed an organized divine service with sacrifices and 
attending priesthood. As evidence we have in Genesis IV., 
3, 4., Cain and Abel bringing sacrifices to Yahveh. In the 
history of Noah, which is likewise Yah vis tic, we find the distinc- 
tion made between clean and unclean beasts, a distinction 
which we meet again only in Leviticus. In this latter book 
the order of the tabernacle worship is more complex and differs 
materially from the order mentioned by the Prophet Ezekiel, 
for which reason its completion or final redaction has been as- 
signed to post-exilic times. Hence it is not unreasonable to 
assign to this Yahvistic account, in its present state, a time 
when the temple worship was developed and the priestly 
authority undisputably established, of which there is no evidence 
prior to the time of Josiah (640, 604). From the geogra- 
phical notices (verses 10, 14,) we may learn that the trade with 
India, opened by Solomon (1015, 915) must have settled down 
to certain staple articles, among others gold — " the land Cha- 
velah (Inr^la) where there is the gold. 7 ' India had become estab- 
lished %9 Ihe gold land par excellence. Among a people chiefly 



38 THE LITERARY 



agricultural, the commercial enterprises do not follow in such 
rapid succession as to mark out lines of trade in a very short 
time. We may be sure that considerable time elapsed from 
that first partnership of King Solomon with Hiram, King of 
Tyre, before India became well known and the gold of India 
proverbial. But not only was India well known, but the Eu- 
phrates was then the chief river, " the fourth river is the Eu- 
phrates." On this river no comment seemed necessary. It 
was well known, since the main troubles of the Israelites orig- 
inated from thence, namely the Assyrians who overthrew the 
kingdom of Israel, and the Babylonians who held Judah cap- 
tive. Nor is the defective geography, assigning one source to 
the four rivers, any evidence of early composition, for we 
find the- same error among Greek writers of the fifth century. 
The tree of life shows an intimate connection with Assyrian, 
and even Persian notions. Internal as well as external evidence 
point to a close intercourse with Assyria and Persia. In the 
time immediately before the first destruction of the Umple and 
during the Exile and Return, such connection is certain to 
have existed, and we shall not err if we place the date of the 
composition of the second account during the sixth century 
B.C., though the probability is that it is even of post-exilic 
origin, after the Israelites became acquainted with Persia, or 
through the Persian conquest of Babylonia with the dualistic sys- 
tem of the Zoroastrian religion, with its personification of evil in 
Ahriman. In the body of myths and legends, which they found 
existing among the Assyrians, and which were there already 
stereotyped in a rich literature, the Israelites recognized the 
elaboration of traditions afloat among themselves ; they met there 
the gods which their forefathers had worshipped in the wild- 
erness. But the Israelites had developed these mythological 
conceptions in a different direction. Elohim and Yahveh had 
become their national Deity, and the authors of Genesis when 
they began, each from his own standpoint, to write their national 



CRITICISM. 39 



histories, adapted these traditions to the religious and political 
notions prevalent among them. The northern compiler to con- 
firm the people in the .worshiD of Elohim, and the priestly writer 
to bring the legends intc harmony wi f h the theocratic constitu- 
tion of the kingdom of Judah or the Restoration of the Temple 
worship. 



THE TESTIMONY OF ARCHAEOLOGY. 



THE 



TESTIMONY OF ARCHAEOLOGY. 



Having, by a rational interpretation of the texts, fixed the 
approximate date of their first composition in Hebrew and also 
of their final redaction, I shall now give what we mast think to be 
the real sources of these biblical traditions. 

That the contents of these two accounts were not the sole 
property of the Hebrews, but the development out of a com- 
mon body of Semitic tradition, the discoveries of the lamented 
George Smith at Kouyunjik give emphatic and undeniable tes- 
timony. What is called the " Chaldean account of Genesis " 
is contained in twelve tablets, which bear on one side the text 
and on the other side the following inscription :— '' First tablet : 
when above " (i. e., the first two words of the text on the other 
side of the tablet and so ou each tablet). . After this su- 
perscription follows the dedication, or rather the announcement' 
that these tablets were prepared by the direction of King As- 
surbanipai and placed in his library at his palace. The first 
tablet opens with the description of Chaos, which reads as fol- 
lows : " When above were not raised the Heavens, and below 
on the Earth a plant had not grown up, the Abyss also had 
not broken up their boundaries, the Chaos (Tiamat, in Hebrew 
Thomoth) was the producing mother of the whole of them- 
Those waters at the beginning were ordained but a tree had 



44 THE TESTIMONY 



not grown, a flower had not unfolded. When the Gods had 
not sprung up any one of them, a plant had not grown and 
order did not exist, were made also the great Gods." The 
rest of the tablet contains the creation of these Gods. The 
contents of the fragments of the next three tablets can not 
yet be united in a connected narrative, but, both from indivi- 
dual words which are decipherable, and from the fact that the 
tablet following contains the creation of the heavenly bodies, 
we may conclude, that the second tablet contained the des- 
cription of the creation of light, the first Biblical day ; the 
third, of the atmosphere and firmament, the second Biblical 
day, and the fourth, of dry land and plants, the third Biblical 
day. The fifth tablet opens as follows : T ' It was delightful, all 
that was fixed by the Great Gods. Stars, their appearance in 
figures of animals, He arranged. To fix the year through the 
observation of their constellations, twelve months [signs] of stars 
in three rows He arranged, from the day when the year commences 
until its close. He marked the positions, of the wandering 
stars [planets] to shine in their courses that they may not do 
injury and may not trouble any one. And he opened the great 
gates in darkness shrouded ; the fastenings were strong on the 
left and right. In its mass (i.e., the lower Chaos ) he made 
a boiling, the God Uru (the moon, Yareach in Hebrew) he 
caused to rise out ; the night he overshadowed, to fix it also 
for the light of the night until the shining of the day, that the 
month might not "be broken and in its amount be regular. At 
the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night, his horns 
are breaking through to shine on the Heaven. On the seventh 
day to a circle he begins to swell and stretches farther to- 
wards the dawn. When the God Shamas (the sun, Shemeshin the 
Bible) in the horizon of Heaven, in the east, he formed beau- 
tifully to shine upon the orbit. Shamas was perfected and 
at the coming of the dawn, Shamas should change." Thus 
reads part of the fifth tablet parallel to the fourth day of the 



OF ARCHAEOLOGY. 45 



Bible, but somewhat more poetical and indicating an already 
developed system of astronomy. The sixth tablet is wanting ; 
but here again we may conclude that it contained an ac- 
count parallel to the fifth Biblical day, since the following 
seventh of the series contains the account of the creation of 
land, animals and mighty monsters, corresponding to the sixth 
day of Genesis. The close of this tablet is badly mutilated 
hut the word "man" is repeated with expressions of admir- 
ation, so that the conjecture, that the Chaldean account of 
the creation like that of Genesis closed with the creation of 
man in 'the image of God, is a very reasonable one and 
fully approved by French and German Assyriologists. We 
have thus an exact parallelism for the six days of creation* 
yet it by no means stops short at that. In 1869, Smith 
discovered an Assyrian almanac, in which each month is di 
vided into four weeks, and the seventh days are set aside for 
"Days of the rest for the heart," and Dr. Frederick Delitzsch 
discovered lately that the very name of Sabbath was ap- 
plied to those rest-days. In an Assyrian list of synonyms 
the expression " Urn " and " Nu-uh' Lib-bi " (day of rest for 
the heart) is explained to mean " Sabbattuv " Sabbath. Of 
the fall of man we have yet no direct account, but we meet 
with constant allusions to the sinfulness of man caused by his 
first parents. We have a tablet containing the curse pro- 
nounced upon the first pair, in consequence of some trans- 
gression, and we have on an ancient Babylonian cylinder a 

• 

pictorial representation applicable in all its features to the 
detailed account of the Bible. A man and a woman, sit- 
ting opposite each other on either side of a tree from which 
fruits are hanging, stretch up their hands towards the fruit 
and a serpent is standing on its tail behind the woman. 
The identity of the Babylonian province of Gan-Dunias with 
the biblical Gan-Eden " Garden of Eden," conjectured by Sir 
Henry Rawlinson, has been confirmed by Dr. Delitzsch, who 



45 THE TESTIMONY 

further more identified the mystical rivers of Paradise, " Gihon 
and Pishon." Nor are the Cherubim and the flaming sword 
guarding the " Tree of Life " wanting, they are found on 
hundreds of cylinders and signets. The parallelism of the 
two accounts in Genesis with the Chaldean records is eotn- 
plete ; not a single feature is omitted. The Chaos in the 
beginning, the Creation in the six periods in the same sequence, 
man its crown, the fall and the curse, Paradise with the trees 
and their guardians, are all found in this remarkable coun- 
terpart of Genesis. The legend of the flood, the ark, the fate 
of Noah, form a second cycle of events in the Chaldean re- 
cords with a very striking resemblance to the Biblical nar- 
rative. The distinguishing, feature between the Biblical and 
the Chaldean accounts seems to be the polytheistic element of 
the latter and the strict monotheism of the former, but even 
this difference is largely reduced on a close examination of both 
accounts. The fundamental religious idea underlying the Chal- 
dean legends is Zabaism, or a worship of the heavenly bodies, 
and which afterwards developed into a worship of Gods, each 
haying a representation in the celestial sphere. In the Chaldean 
Pantheon, "II" stands at the head, the fountain and origin of 
Deity, equivalent to the Hebrew El, Eloah, with its plural 
Elohim and of the Arabic Allah. The word used in the He- 
brew text of Genesis, and translated God, is Elohim, a plural, 
but the verbs and pronouns agreeing with it are all in the 
singular, excepting in the account of the sixth day. The 
twenty-sixth verse of the first chapter of Genesis reads, "And 
Elohim said : Let us make man in our image, after our like- 
ness. 7 ' The twenty-seventh verse again returns to the singular 
by beginning, " So Elohim created the man in his own image, 
in the image of Elohim created he him." We see then the 
noun signifying the Deity is plural, but conceived as a unit in 
its creative power. And now let us look at the first verse of 
the account of the fourth day and the fifth Chaldean tablet quoted 



OP ARCHAEOLOGY. 47 



above in full. " It was delightful all that was fixed by the 
Great Gods, (Illinu, Hebrew Elohim) stars their appearance in 
figures of Animals He arranged" Exactly as in the Hebrew 
text, the noun is in the plural and the pronoun and verb in 
the singular, and this is kept up throughout the whole account. 
Thus under the test of the linguistic crucible this difference also 
gives way and the identity of the Hebrew and Chaldean ac- 
counts, not only in their incidents but even in their fundamental 
mythological notions must be accepted as proven. Nay, we even 
find that the Israelites worshipped old Chaldean Gods ; to which 
reference is made in Amos V., 26, where the Israelites are re- 
proached for having worshipped Saturn (Keeyun) in the wil- 
derness. In the same passage the God SikkiUh, " Your king/' is 
mentioned ; this Sikkuth has been identified by Schrader with 
the Babylonian Sakkuth, a surname of the God Ninip or Adar 
(this last is likewise the name of the twelfth month of the 
Hebrew calendar). We see then that the Israelites were, in 
their earlier stages of religious development, Zabaeans, using 
the Gods of the ancient Chaldeans, and it is therefore per- 
fectly natural that they should have the same cosmogony with 
the Chaldeans and that, when it was found necessary to 
commit those ancient traditions to writing, they should use 
the c" ' Chaldean sources. But, since the originals of these 
Chaldean accounts were written in a non-Semitic language, 
the Akkadian, their transcribers into Hebrew probably used 
the Assyrian translation of the original, made by order of As- 
surbanipal. Each transcriber would naturally take from these 
legends what suited the object he had in view ; the Elohist 
would find that the detailed account of the creation in six 
days in orderly succession redounded to the greater glory of 
Elohim and, as we said above, would prefer to base the ob- 
servation of the Sabbath upon the close of this grand scheme 
of creation by Elohim. On the other hand the Yahvistic 
writer would t;ike what he could find in reference to man 



48 THE TESTIMONY 

in his relation to the Gods, to begin therewith his book of 
the Covenants for the benefit of his priestly station. 

Now let us see whether the date of the composition of 
the Chaldean originals can be established, — not the exact year, 
indeed, but the period of time later than which they cannot 
have been committed to writing. In the form in which we 
have them now their near date can be fixed with absolute 
certainty. They were found in the Archive chamber of the 
palace of Assurbanipa/ at Nineveh, and this greatest of all As- 
syrian rulers was king from 668 to 626, B.C. The grandest 
work of his was the institution of the great library of Kouyunjik. 
This library consisted of clay-tablets inscribed in the Assy- 
rian character of the cuneiform ; these inscriptions contained 
the annals of the kingdom and letters of all sorts, public and 
private, and the sum and substance of the knowledge of the 
Assyrians in all branches of the Sciences then existing, and 
which included finally these legends of the Creation. These last, 
though written in Assyrian characters, are expressly stated to 
be translations of older texts. These older texts were in a 
different language, which is proven in the first place by the 
character of the proper names, most of which are not trans- 
latable nor intelligible by means of the Assyrian language, and 
then by the finding of a dictionary and lists of synonyms, pre- 
pared in order to make clear the meaning of different words, 
and embracing the features of the two languages involved. 
Hence we know that they were written in the so-called Akka- 
dian or Chaldean cuneiform. The texts themselves indicate that 
they were written at Babylon during the time that there were 
flourishing kingdoms in what was afterwards called the Babylo- 
nian empire ; and since that Empire was overthrown by Tugulti- 
nirdp, king of Assyria in 1298 B.C., this date forms our new 
starting point. Next we have the concurrent testimony of 
Berosus, and the inscriptions that a foreign people, probably 
the Arabs, ruled over Chaldea for a period of 245 years. Ths 



OF ARCHAEOLOGY. 49 



name of the foreign invader was Hu?nmurabi, whose latest pos- 
sible date is 1543 B.C., or, according to Rawlinson, 1518, and 
as these texts cannot have been written later than this king, 
we have to take a new starting point from the middle of the 
sixteenth century B.C. From geographical notices contained 
in the tablets it must be concluded that they were written at 
a time when there existed many large cities which were ruled 
by their kings, the strongest of whom always ruled over others. 
Such cities are the Biblical Ur of the Chaldees, Erech, the modern 
Warka, Akkad and Kalneh. 

On the monuments of Chaldea the names of sixteen kings can 
be read with certainty and those of ten others of doubtful read- 
ing who reigned from 2200 B.C. to the Arab invasion. The 
first of these kings is Urukh, whose name is found stamped on 
the bricks of the ruins at Warka and Mugheir. He calls 
himself constantly King of the United Kingdoms of Sumir and 
Akkad and, since in the oldest cuneiform the whole of Chaldea 
is called Akkad, we may conclude with certainty that he 
united all the districts of the country under one rule. Now, in 
the tablets comprising the Genesis series, although they contain 
many geographical notices and speak of cities, districts and 
kingdoms, no mention is made of the union of all these into 
one kingdom, the main distinguishing feature between the time 
after Urukh and that antecedent to him. The natural conclu- 
sion is, therefore, that the writer of the original account hved 
before the time in which the TJnion was accomplished, conse- 
quently prior to 2200 B.C., the latest date assigned to Urukh 
by any historian. 

According to the concurrent testimony of Kallisthenes, Aris- 
totle, Pliny, and the Byzantine Stephen, the Union of the king- 
doms took place between 2234 and 2231 B.C., a date which is 
aecepted by all modern historians. The conclusions we have 
reached may then be thus briefly stated. The legends ha ring 
existed for a long time as oral traditions, were committed to 



50 THE TESTIMONY OF ARCHAEOLOGY. 



writing before the union of the kingdoms or before 2234 B.C., 
when Abraham, according to Biblical chronology, was not yet 
born. The earliest date assigned to the composition of the 
Biblical records is the time of Moses ; this date is positively 
established through hieroglyph ical inscriptions to be that of the 
king Menephthah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, who followed his 
father Rameses II. on the throne in the year 1245 BcC. 
According to this the Chaldean account of Genesis would be 
nearly 1000 years older than the composition of the Biblical 
legends. 

This then is the alternative to which the advocates of the 
Mosaic authorship are driven. If in spite of all internal and ex* 
ternal evidence, in spite of the critical labors of Bleek, Sharpe, 
Ewald, and Kuenen they insist upon it that the Pentateuch was 
composed by the great teacher Moses, they must either give up 
the claim of divine inspiration for the accounts of Genesis, or 
they must assume that the Chaldean compiler had alike inspi- 
ration a thousand years before Moses ; or, accept the alterna- 
tive, that while in Chaldea ; hese facts — as our orthodox divines 
claim them to be — were known for a thousand years, it needed 
a special divine inspiration to convey them to Moses. But to 
escape the dilemma in such a manner would be clearly derog- 
atory both to the character of Deity aud the intellect of the 
great Lawgiver. 



PARALLEL MYTHS, 



PARALLEL MYTHS. 



We must even go further. We must claim divine inspira- 
tion for nearly all the cosmical myths of antiquity, for they all 
contain some of the elements of the Hebrew legends. Thus, 
to begin with the Greeks. Their account begins with Chaos, 
out of which sprang Gea, the earth, and Uranus, the heaven. 
Preceding this separation was the creation of Nyx, night, and 
Hemera, day, as well as Tartarus. The myth of Prometheus 
is well known, in which it is stated that he formed meu of clay 
and gave them life with fire from heaven. In the Greek 
traditions we have also the myth of the Deluge with the 
one pair saved. Among the Hindoos we find the following 
version of the story of Adam and Eve. The Brahma created 
a man and a woman, Adima and Heva, and placed them 
on the beautiful island of Ceylon, surrounding them with all 
the splendor that the luxuriant tropical soil is capable of pro- 
ducing. He gave them the command to love each other, to 
multiply and never to leave the island. Then the devil in- 
vited the man to ascend a high cliff near the sea and there 
he showed him a peninsula, connected with the island by a 
narrow neck of land, and the magnificence of that place far 
surpassed the splendor of his own island. Adima and Heva 
were thus hiduced to leave their destined abode and proceed 
to the new land. But when they were on the neck of land, 
all disappeared. The land in front of them dissolved as a 



54 PARALLEL 



mirage, and the land behind them sank with a crash, and they 
were left on a bare rock. Brahma then cursed Man on ac- 
count of his disobedience. In fragments of the Phoenician 
writer Sanchoniathon, we find that all things began with 
Erebus (the Hebrew Erebh, mixture J or Chaos and a dark 
and condensed wind-air ( " the spirit of Elohim hovered ' over 
the water," Gen. 1, 2 ; the Hebrew " ruach" means both spirit 
and wind). They were for a long series of ages destitute 
of form. The union of this wind at last with Chaos pro- 
duced all creation. First came Mot (the 'Hebrew Muttah, ex- 
pause, Isaiah VIII, 8,) and from him the seed of all creation. 
He shone out with the sun and the moon and the greater and 
lesser stars. Then came the generation 'of animals " and male 
and female moved on the earth and in the sea." Farther on 
we find the enmity of Hypsuranius towards his brother Usous, 
who first invented a covering fur the body of the skins of 
wild beasts. Unmistakably a jumbling together of Cain and 
Abel and the covering of skins, provided for Man in the 
Bible. We find among the first men there, the inventors of 
smith-craft and other useful arts. In a fragment of the same 
writer, preserved by Eusebius, serpent-worship is accounted for, 
because " this animal was held to be the most spirit-like of all 
the reptiles " 

The myths which Berosus, the Babylonian, narrated, are 
essentially the same as found in the clay-tablets at Kouyunjik, 
and we need not dwell upon them. The following is the story 
of the first man and woman according to the Persian accounts : 
" Mashia and Mas/iianeh (that is "man and woman") were creat- 
ed in holiness, and had received commandment from the Supreme 
God, Akura, to cherish good thoughts, to speak good words, 
to do good deeds and not to sacrifice to the evil spirits. But 
after some time their thoughts were polluted by the Evil One 
and they began to worship him. After that they wandered 
about for thirty days without food and in black clothes, and 



* MYTHS. 55 



then they caught a white goat and drank some of its milk. 
This sin was followed by a still greater one, the eating of flesh, 
and by another still heavier yet, for when they had discovered 
iron they felled trees. At last they worshipped the evil spirits." 
The Persian mythology contains the account of the beautiful 
garden (Paradeisos, hence our Paradise) with the tree of life, 
where mighty rivers rise. Passing from Asia to the north of 
Europe, we find the following strange myth. Ymir, the abor- 
iginal giant, fell asleep and began to perspire, there grew out 
from behind his left arm a man and woman, and out of his feet 
came the six-headed giant. The children killed their father 
Ymir aud his blood submerged the whole earth, so that all were 
drowned but one. This one entered with his wife into a boat 
and gave rise to a new generation. The place assigned to man 
for his dwelling in the Edda is called Midgard, or Jliddelgarden, 
which was created out of the eyebrows of Ymir. The eyebrows 
undoubtedly refer to vegetation. However, these must suffice. 
'J 'hey will, I hope, at least show, that a body of tradition belong- 
ing to the primitive Asiatic world, was developed by each stock 
separately according to its mode of life and moral conditions 
produced in the course of its social development. The Aryan 
world worked its store of myths into heroic forms, the Maha- 
baratta, the Ramayana, the Iliad and Odyssey, and Ska/i Nahmeh 
of Firdusi, the Edda and the Nibelwngenlied. The Semi ic 
world developed systems of theology to suit the bent of irs mind 
and the impressions from the objects of nature which became 
Indra, Hercules, Baldur and Rustem, grew with the Semitic into 
gods on one hand and into attributes of the national gods on the 
other. The solar myths, which became heroic fables among the 
Hindoos and Greeks, became accounts of Genesis among the Chal- 
dees aud Hebrews The idea that the account of Genesis is a 
solar myth, or rather a myth of the dawn, was advanced as early 
as the end of the last century by the celebrated German poet and 
philosopher Herder. In Germany, Herder is considered as one 



56 PARALLEL 



of the first who divined, as it were, the theory of Evolution. 
Herder suggested that this account was simply the description 
of awakening nature at the dawn of the day, when the darkness 
of night yields to morning twilight and nature gradually awakes 
from her slumber. And, typically, this is correct, not only so 
far as the story of Genesis is concerned, but as including all 
legends They are all petrified descriptions of natural processes, 
expressed in the figurative language of undeveloped minds lacking 
the power of abstraction. Thus the Greek mythology is explain- 
ed and the Hindoo and the rest of the Aryan legends. Why 
not likewise the Semitic legends ? Because they contain scien- 
tific facts ? Let us examine into the statements of Genesis. 



THE TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 



THE 



TESTIMONY OF FACTS. 



jlx the outset it will be seen to be foreign to our pur- 
pose to introduce here any evidence in proof of the reality of 
the process of Evolution. But the existing evidence that 
things have been brought to their present condition by a slow 
process of succession in which the more simple forms preceded 
the more complex, is unanimously conceded by all who have 
investigated any branch of natural science, and effectually con- 
tradicts the sudden and separate origin of things deducible 
from the account in Genesis. With this, it will be sufficient if 
we point out in a brief way the facts discovered by science 
which contradict the account of creation in Genesis, whether 
we accept the sequence of plants and animals revealed by a 
study of fossils and living kinds, as indicating a genetic con- 
nection, or as being insufficient grounds for such a conception. 
From internal evidence, Genesis is not homogeneous in its 
composition, as we have already seen. An originally detached 
portion having a different immediate source, terminates with the 
third verse of the second chapter, and it is quite evident that 
in dividing the text into chapters a mistake has been committed 
in this instance ; the second chapter should begin, if an arbitrary 
division into chapters is intended to help the comprehension of the 



60 THE TESTIMONY 

text, at its fourth verse. That these two accounts contradict 
each other is plain. The first account affirms that when God 
created man, "male and female created he them." The second 
account as positively declares that man was created in the per- 
son of Adam as one sex and solitary. Finding that such a 
creation was incomplete and useless, the Deity made woman not 
out of the ground or dust, but of a bone of man himself. At 
one time one can readily conceive that such a belief could be 
seriously entertained when we read the accounts given by ex- 
isting savages of their own origin. But it never for one moment 
occurs to us to credit such conceptions. The idealists have 
been busy with this account of the origin of woman. It is 
taken as symbolical of the marriage state, of the dependence of 
woman upon man, " bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh." But 
to the uncultured races their fairy-stories are real, they believe 
them as Roman Catholics believe modern miracles and Protes- 
tants ancient miracles. Among the people who originated this 
fairy-tale of the origin of the first pair, the story passed for 
circumstantial fact. It satisfied their natural enquiry as to 
the origin of things, and it arose out of their mental status. 
But to ask us, who have gone beyond their mental condition, 
to still accept it as true, is unreasonable, and it is quite im- 
possible that we should comply with such a request. 

In the second account the events of creation are given in a 
different order from the first, and this account is throughout 
more circumstantial. The garden of Eden is described and this 
has been lately identified with the mythological center of the 
ancient Chaldean pantheon. Before both accounts were cast in 
their present fossil condition in the Hebrew Bible, they proba- 
bly had a connection, as we have seen in a preceding chapter, 
and had undergone a development in which both had lost 
something of their original form, the first account more, the 
last less. 

The first account in the first chapter of Genesis may be 



OF PACTS. 61 



now compared with the facts ascertained by science* We must 
believe that the text should be understood literally when it 
speaks of " day " and " night," because with this reading it agrees 
with the context. From the alternation of light and dark- 
ness sprang " day" and " night" and "the evening and the morn- 
ing were one day." To take these days as indefinite periods 
is a proof of a want of exact thought, it is an effort to 
reconcile an exploded statement with the new facts, rather 
than cut loose at once from demonstrated error. The He- 
brew word Yom not only means a day of twenty-four hours, 
but it expressly means day in this connection. 

But even granted that we take the less natural meaning 
of the word "day" as the proper rendering, and that by this 
word u day " any conceiveable measurement of time is intend- 
ed, it is only on the fourth of these days that the Sun appears. 
Astronomy, if it shows anything, proves that the satellites of 
a central orb, as separate masses of matter, must have been 
projected from it and at one time formed a part of such a 
body. The relation between the earth and the sun, as we 
gather it from astronomical sources, is a different one from 
that intended by the account in Genesis. We cannot con- 
ceive that the sun or the moon were created for the benefit of 
the earth or its inhabitants, Night and day are not necessities 
in the sense that we could not have become accustomed to some 
other division of times, for darkness and light, as indeed the 
Eskimo now are. Our organs of vision have plainly adapted 
themselves to the light which evidently existed before eyes 
were developed. And as to the succession we find that the 
earth is the child of the sun and the parent of the moon. 
But, that such a succession was comprehended by the writer 
of Genesis, cannot be maintained. He undoubtedly believed 
that the sun and the moon were created for the benefit of 
the earth, which he did not know was round and a satellite, 
but imagined as flat and the center of the system. Light 



62 THE TESTIMONY 

is also conceived of as independent of the sun. Plants bearing 
" seed and fruit after their kind," are regarded as being creat- 
ed before the sun, whose rays, the physiological botanist now 
shows, alone give them health and vigor. Again, whole groups 
of animals of whose remains mountains are made, such as corals 
and rhizopods, are omitted from the account. Such an omis- 
sion, if it tallied with the restricted knowledge of the times in 
which such an account was believed, proves conclusively that 
the account was not extraneous, or in any way above the 
level of ancient civilization. And undoubtedly it does so tally, 
and the most powerful argument against Genesis, for those ac- 
cessible to reason, lies in the fact that it contains no infor- 
mation superior to a very low grade of obseryation in natural 
history. Later on, in the magnified and equally improbable 
story of Noah's ark, we find no mention of the rescue of the 
plants or how they stood the flood. At that time it was 
simply not known that plants breathed like animals and would 
drown as well as they 

The record of the rocks tell us unmistakably that plants and 
animals have flourished through untold ages side by side, new 
forms succeeding old ones. But in Genesis, the creation of trees 
and shrubs took place in a period perfectly distinct from 
animals. The paleontologist must, then, reject the account of 
Genesis as perfectly incredible. Again the distinction between 
tne " beast of the earth after his kind and cattle after their 
kind " shows a belief that domestic animals were created in a 
state of domestication. The Hebrew word Uhemah means cattle, 
i.e., domesticated animals, in contradistinction to wild animals. 
The other term ihayah means wild beasts in contradistinction 
to tame animals. The use of both terms shows that both 
kinds were believed to have been created " after their kind" 
and as distinct species. There is nothing contradictory in the 
conclusion that the statement was at one time believed in, 
because savage man still believes in parallel assertions, and 



OP FACTS. 63 



this particular belief was generally current in Europe before 
naturalists had shown its contrary to be true and that all 
domestic animals were originally wild and by man's selection 
have been changed from their original physical condition. A 
vegetable diet is also assigned at first to beasts and man, but 
the physiologist knows that carnivorous animals have always 
existed and that the instincts of animals are true to their 
teeth. 

The story of Genesis takes no account of the different 
races of mankind nor of prehistoric man. Its chronology is 
recent and special. All attempts to consider it as merely 
omitting to mention tbese facts which it could as well have 
given, must be rejected as defective reasoning. If it could 
go so far as to note the creation of cultivated races of beasts, 
such as cattle, it should not have failed to note the more im- 
portant races of mankind. The character of the fauna of 
the country in which the myth originated is stamped on 
the face of the recital. All attempts to consider it as the 
true Genesis of the white, or Semitic and Aryan races, and 
therefore as reliable to this extent, must likewise fail. The 
history of the descent of man is not yet written, but, so far 
as we have the facts, they make for the view that the, negro 
is a geographical variety thrown off from an ancient stock 
of mankind, and therefore not an older stem through which 
mankind has passed to become white. 

Finally, at no time can it be true to say that *' thus the 
heavens and earth were finished and all the hosts of them." 
Change in all nature is the well attested truth, and this 
change has never relaxed its endless procession. 

Unessential as much of the scientific criticism directed 
against the ethical portions of the Scripture is seen to be, such 
criticism must be appropriate when directed against a portion 
which deals almost exclusively with statements of tact. When we 
concede that the story of creation iu Genesis may still be counten- 



THE TESTIMONY OP PACTS. 



anced as a grand poetical account of the origin of things, and as 
such be read in the Churches, we feel that we are conceding a 
great deal. But, evidently, to take out of the Bible its scien- 
tific errors throughout, is a task as yet in reserve. It must 
be done if we would show clearly the value of the Bible as 
an ethical production, but it must be left to time. At the 
present we are content if a reasonable ground can be shown 
for rejecting Genesis. Only in this way is it possible to over- 
come the harshness of the dispute between religion and science 
at the present juncture, only in this way can the Churches 
retain their hold upon the intellectual portion of the community. 
Por to all serious people Genesis must seem what it really is, 
an incomplete aud defective account of the origin of things. 
Its elements of ethical instruction are those of popular religion, 
mystery and miracle. But as a whole it contains too gross 
and glaring a contradiction of the evidence drawn from our 
experience to be of enduring value. It will be of advantage 
to Religion and Science to cease to teach it literally and to 
stop all attempts, which must be in vain, of reconciling its 
statements with the facts developing in the progress of human 
knowledge. 

In the Biblical story of creation, we have to do with a 
myth, which had undergone many changes before Genesis was 
written. Since that time aud when the letter could no longer 
change, many differing conceptions of the origin of things have 
found their orthodoxy in a play upon the meaning of the words 
and a distortion of their original intent. A lax wording, a 
shorter and more general statement, a monotheistic conception, 
gives an elasticity to the story of Genesis and a certain adap- 
tiveness to later discoveries ; but in its treatment of the hea- 
vens and the heavenly bodies, in the little bit of the Earth 
on which its miracles are performed, it is still akin to the notions 
of the Homeric ages with regard to the Universe. 



CONCLUSION. 



CONCLUSION 



That the literal teaching of the story of creation as found 
in Genesis, and which we meet preeminently in Sunday School 
catechisms, is injurious in its effect on the mind, we contend. 
It is an impediment to intellectual advancement, because much 
time and thought has to be expended to correct the false 
notion of the origin of things to which it gives rise. It has 
been claimed* that the Bible nowhere opposes demonstrated 
science and also that the Bible is in advance of the attainments 
of science. As to the first, we find in this story of creation, both 
in its temper or idea and its details of the manner in which 
things appeared, that it contradicts our discoveries. As to the 
latter, it is said that the Bible asserted from the first that there 
was chaos, and that science agrees with this statement as being 
true. But chaos in fact we now plainly see, never existed. 
Chaos is a poetical term for disorder, but there never has 
been disorder, much more has there always existed an orderly 
unfolding under the operation of immutable laws which act 
without visible regard as to result, while there is, perhaps, no 
longer room for intelligent doubt that the laws which govern the 
Universe are themselves the properties of matter. To produce 
chaos, matter must be thrown out of its condition in succession 

* The Bible and the Sunday School. Toronto, 1876. 



68 CONCLUSION. 



and position, law must be suspended, and this we can see has 
never happened. 

A Final Cause is deducible from Nature, but not any of 
the systems of Theology. For these latter we have to account 
by inherited ideas arising from a former and ancient physical 
condition of man and his environment and a pre-existing state of 
society. 

In illustration of the advanced position of the Bible I find 
the statement in Revelations, that " the city was pure gold 
like unto glass/ 7 is considered as being afterwards proved to be 
true, because " Faraday has demonstrated that fine gold may 
become perfectly transparent like clear glass." Such a method 
of reasoning is only countenanced because the sanctity of the 
subject pardons the utmost absurdity in its defence. 

Again it has been asserted that Isaiah (40, 22) recognised 
the sphericity of the earth. But the Hebrew word used in 
Isaiah (chug) means circle, i.e., bounded by the horizon and the 
imagined oceans. It is entirely inaccurate to translate it " sphere." 
The passage is in conformity with the erroneous cosmogony of 
the times in which it was written. But if in such poetical 
passages we are to recognize scientific observations, then in the 
second part of the same verse, the antithesis, the poet says : 
V He stretcheth out the heavens like a carpet ;" a saying which 
completes the picture and shows its total misconception of the 
earth and heavens. The Hebrew word for sphere is dur, Isaiah, 
22, 18. The Bible throughout recognizes the so-called Ptole- 
maic astronomy, and the assertions to the contrary are part 
of the grievous offence against truth committed by the popu- 
lar advocates of our religion. It need not be said that a 
knowledge of the Hebrew language, of the genius ot the people, 
or the history of the growth of their religious faith and of 
their contact with polytheistic races, are the last things with 
which our popular preachers concern themselves or their prose- 
lytes. 



CONCLUSION. 69 



With the ethics or morality of the Bible we have not 
here to contend, nor, indeed, have we any quarrel. But that 
the Bible contains erroneous statements of natural phenomena 
and that it could not be otherwise, as emanating from writers 
with an incorrect idea of such phenomena, we do insist. The 
purely poetical utterances of the Bible writers were not in- 
tended to be taken literally, and even if some of them con- 
tain a true statement of natural facts, it was not that scien- 
tific truth was the main object of such utterances which 
rather aimed to stir the emotions for the Hebrew conception 
of the might and majesty of Jehovah. But obviously the 
majority of such passages are metaphorical and images of 
speech and can never bear a different interpretation. All 
attempts to prove the contrary have failed and even by the 
most liberal use of its poetical imagery the contradictions of 
the scriptures cannot be explained away. But we must also 
insist that this is the worst use to which the Bible can be 
put. For out of the Bible we may construct our ethical sys- 
tem, but not our scientific explanation of the Universe. So 
far as the story of creation goes, it is a teleological exposition 
with man as the central point of the whole Universe, with 
the Sun to give light by day and the moon by night. But 
it is no explanation of the origin of the sun, moon or man. 
" In the beginning " is not only indefinite , and imaginative, but 
it is a virtual dodging of the whole question. The story 
that things, as they are, were miraculously made so, is only 
another way of stating that they are because they are. But 
obviously with such an answer the mind of man cannot in 
reason be satisfied. And with Genesis, or the origin of things, 
it is the office of Science to deal, and not Religion. 

The serious question before the friends of education in 
America is that of Sunday Schools. Nowhere are such im- 
pressible scholars gathered together, nowhere such incompetent 
teachers as in the Sunday School. With us the Sunday School 



70 CONCLUSION. 



has outgrown the Church itself. The scenes enacted at 
Fairpoint and on the St. Lawrence each summer, clearly show 
how much of an " institution " the Sunday School has become, 
how it replaces the old camp-meeting and satisfies the aver- 
age amount of reason which we allow in matters of Religion. 
Better than the camp-meeting in some respects, it is worse 
in its effects on the growing generation. The vulgarity, 
ignorance, and prejudice there exhibited is not condoned by 
the moralities instilled, but falls on the young mind and too 
often leaves its fatal impress of narrowness to be carried in 
the community thenceforward. What to do to reform the Sunday 
Schools, will soon be the clearly defined question for the 
Public Schools to take in hand. While these latter are im- 
proving in their methods, the former are appealing in prin- 
ciple to a vicious system of reasoning, and virtually doing 
all in their power to counterbalance the effects of our system 
of secular instruction. In the Bible a single text-book is 
found from between whose lids the Sunday School teacher 
declares all wisdom to flow. Text-books on Science as used 
in the Public Schools are either formally or by implication 
regarded as worthless and deceptive. So soon as a matter 
of scientific discovery becomes so patent that it can be no 
longer denied, a mystic utterance of the Bible is found which 
will bear a construction relating to the new facts and this 
sense is forthwith given to the passage. In the meantime the 
Sunday School teachers are drilled by pamphlet and oral in- 
struction in a system of narrow thinking upon the widest and 
most important topic that there is. The best that can be 
said of all this, is that the sects, through their different or- 
ganizations, hold each other in check and thus prevent the 
subversion of our civil liberties. Bat in the meantime the whole 
nation is sacrificed to illiberality and a fatal one-sidedness. 
Again, in the Sunday School the Protestant sects meet as on 
a common ground. If Genesis, and its fairy-tales of creation 



CONCLUSION. Ti 



could be taken out of the Sunday School there would result 
an immense gain to the future intelligence of our people. No 
other reform in the Sunday School would accomplish so much 
for the cause of humanity and right reason. 

And undoubtedly this would be a great reform, but the 
question remains, how is this reform to be brought about ? 
It seems to me, only through an increasing reasonableness on 
the part of the laity which will encourage the priesthood to 
entertain more liberal views. To bring about such wider ac- 
tion, the subjects claimed by Theology as belonging to Reli- 
gion, but which are equally claimed by Science, must be dis- 
cussed in an earnest and yet tender spirit, trying as much as 
possible to avoid giving offense, remembering how many sides 
there are to the human mind, and surmounting the natural temp- 
tation to indulge in malice and uncharitableness. It must 
never be forgotten that what we are working for is, in the 
main, neither for nor against the Bible, or any other book, but 
a greater reasonableness and breadth of view which will make 
life, however it may have originated, happier and more useful. 
From our standpoint, the condition of out* religion, such as it 
is, is the result of the average mental status of the people from 
whom it proceeds. To work to the betterment of the general 
intelligence and so at last to reach its religious expression, must 
be the line of action for the man of Science and of literature. 

But when we write to advocate liberalism in religion, it 
must be clear what we intend by the term. When so pure a 
man as Cardinal Newman can say : " For fifty years I have 
resisted to the best of my power the spirit of liberalism in re- 
ligion," it is quite clear that liberalism must present itself to 
some worthy minds as something not altogether beautiful and 
to be desired ; and, indeed, when we turn to the writings of 
a certain set of liberals, both in England and America, we 
can well understand that liberalism bears sometimes strange 



1'2 CONCLUSION. 



and dead fruit. But even this best of prelates has no cure for 
the objectionable features of liberalism except a return to 
dogma, and the age for a blind belief in dogma is, as we 
can plainly see, passing away. Certainly, when Cardinal New- 
man admits that there are in liberalism both justice and be- 
nevolence, he cannot but also admit that, through experience, 
Society can produce right thinking and acting outside of the 
pale of conservative theology. His very fairness towards liber- 
alism makes his opposition to it very strong and attractive 
to those who are constantly outraged by the violence of 
both the liberal and ecclesiastical controversialists. But who 
are most to blame in this matter? Certainly, in America 
we are suffering mostly under the infliction of a half-educated 
ministry. The vulgarity of the ordinary run of Protestant 
preaching and the insistence on the narrowest views and most 
untenable dogmas, fills the land with discordant clamor. The 
churches seem often merely to displace the theatres for one 
day out of seven to be more provocative of scandul than 
these. To hold liberalism to account for the absurdities of a 
few radicals, is certainly a graire mistake and it does not seem 
clear that their offenses are as bad, or their influences for evil 
as great as those of the general run of theologians. They are 
simply deficient in taste and knowledge and are one-sided to a 
great extent. They do not appreciate all the points of the 
liberal problem in religion, just as so many of the clergy see 
only one aspect of the conservative. What Cardinal Newman 
complains of is really the natural difference between one mind 
and another, and the fact that ill-balanced natures, belonging 
to what party they may, appear to imperil society by the ex- 
travagance of their language. But the final criterion must lie 
in the accumulating experience of mankind and not in any one 
statement put forth at any given time by any one person. And 
the criterion is now seen to reside outside the Church and 
to rest in the general judgment of mankind, which is made 



CONCLUSION. 73 



up of the opinions of individuals. Mankind cannot now go 
back to the surrender of private judgment ; it is even doubtful 
if such an action is seriously looked for anywhere in the pale 
of Christianity. In the mean time, the liberalism we intend is 
that impartiality which comes from the power of looking at a 
question from all sides, and which depends on knowledge and 
experience to balance the mind and give it fairness and flexi- 
bility. The progress and improvement of the age seem inevi- 
table, and in so far the side-harbors that appear safest may 
prove dangerous and fatal to the individual whose best course 
is in the full stream of human thought and action. Death, as 
we see, is one of many changes and Life itself is only one of 
these. 

" Sleep, loosing cares of mind, fell on Achilles as he lay 
by the sounding sea, and there stood before him the soul of 
Patroklos, like to him altogether in stature and the beau- 
teous eyes and the voice, and the garments that wrapped 
his skin ; he spake and Achilles stretched out to grasp him 
with loving hands, but caught him not, and like a smoke 
the soul sped twittering below the Earth." 

This fairy-tale of Genesis belongs also to dreamland and 
must fade away when we attempt to make it stand forth in 
the best light we can throw upon it. For experience is against 
its reality, nor can the seriousness of the narrative dispel the 
effect of enchantment and illusion which it carries with it. In 
so far as it is seriously told and seriously believed, does there 
seem a certain ungraciousness in revealing its falsity. The haud 
that banishes the dream, must be not only firm, but gentle 
and dear, to be welcome. For the laity, then, in general 
and the gentler Doctors of Divinity, it is clear that every 
consideration must be shown and any wanton attacks upon 
their feelings avoided, while the truth in the matter of Genesis 
should be none the less plainly brought to their notice. But 



U CONCLUSION 



for noisy people, like the Rev. Joseph Cook or Dr. McCosh, 
and the host of smaller theologians copying these models, 
one need feel little sympathy, letting the facts cut them 
(even as they themselves delight to hew Agag) in pieces. 
But it would be far better if these loud people would apply 
the saying of Demokritos : " He who is fond of contradiction 
and makes many words, is incapable of learning anything 
that is right," and so mend their ways and their thoughts. 

In a time when serious facts, and the bearing of these facts 
upon our religious conceptions are being carefully and slowly 
considered, such writers as we speak of, take the opportunity 
to mock and falsify. In the confusion which they help to 
create they hope to pass themselves off not only as competent 
but as alone competent to deal with these questions of the 
times and as having fully answered them. Under the cover 
of loose and exaggerated statements respecting some ultimate 
and little understood philosophic conceptions, they keep out of 
sight the infirmities of the main mass of theological dogma- 
With Mr. Mallock they would have us accept the manifestly 
false, for fear that the truth will slay us and destroy for us 
the beauty of the world. But the Truth will make us free, 
and their fears are plainly either imaginary or pretended. It 
is seen to be really themselves and their own ends which con- 
cern them mostly and not a reasonable and peaceful outcome 
for Humanity from its present mental difficulties. Time, the 
unfailing discoverer, will assign them their proper place in the 
memory of the race. For though it is true that to each one, 
of us Life is a short time in which we remember and Death a 
long time in which we forget, yet the universal memory of 
Man endures with the race and is made more sweet or bitter 
by each action accomplished and each thought entertained by 
any one of us. 



PHILOSOPHY. 



PHILOSOPHY. 

By philosophy we mean, after all, an explanation of our- 
selves and the world in which we are.* The range of meaning 
in words is so great that ordinarily we conceal under this 
term one knows not how much that is mysterious, and that 
may even be held unnecessary. But something of a philoso- 
phy we all of us attain to, as the natural result of our sense 
impressions, and our inherited ideas. We shall find past 
philosophies of our own race embedded in our mythologies 
and for those of savage nations, we must look to their existing 
explanations of phenomena, physical and mental, as they are 
conceived of by them. 

At the outset we find that the Hebrews were originally wor- 
shippers of nature. Under the name Baal, they personified 
the bun. The name Baal lost in time its connection with the 
Sun and was used as the proper name for a Deity, and one 
who struggled for preference in men's minds with Yahveh or 
Jehovah. The progress to the undivided supremacy of Yahveh 
has been traced by Kuenen at length. It is sufficient to note 
here that Yahveh was not at first the exclusive God, which he 
afterwards became mainly through the exertions of the pro- 
phets and preachers, who were, above all things, teachers of 
morals and a purer conduct. And there is this to be said that, 
at this earliest time, the ninth century before Christ, when we 
find Yahvism and Nature worship contending for supremacy 
in the religion of the Hebrews, there was no such contention 
among Aryan peoples unless we interpret the struggle between 
Brahmism and Buddhism, as such. The early Greeks and Per- 
sians had, indeed, disputes among philosophers, but they them- 



* Education and the Succession of Experiences. Vice-Presidential address 
delivered before the Am. Ass. Adv. Science, by A. R. G-rote, August, 1878. 



78 PHILOSOPHY. 



selves in their religion had not risen above Nature worship . 
During the religious struggles of the Hebrews, Yahvism passed 
through a stage in which Yahveh was the chief god, others being 
tolerated, to a time in which all other gods were completely de- 
graded from their position as deities. This position of Yahveh 
as merely the principal deity, is paralleled by that of Jupiter 
and Zeus at a later epoch in the mythology of Indo-European 
nations. There is much to be said in favor of the idea that 
Yahveh originally personated the movements of Nature, or life, 
although the connection is as yet obscure. But the coloring 
of the conception of Yahveh by the later Prophets is one 
which is now indelibly affixed. Yahveh stands out pre-emi- 
nently as the re warder of just, and the punisher of unjust 
actions among men. At the time when Christianity appeared, 
the Hebrew mind was endeavoring to free itself from the an- 
thropomorphic conceptions which clung to Yahveh. This is 
quite apparent in certain of the teachings of our Saviour. 
Yahveh was no longer then in advanced minds among the 
Jews, a Being who loved and hated, was pleased and angry. 
These conceptions we are yet struggling with, in the progress 
towards abstract Theism. We have abandoned, on the Nature- 
side of philosophy, the idea that there is a God behind each 
particular object, and have arrived at the conception that 
there is only one God behind all objects. But we cling very 
naturally to the Aryan philosophy rather than the Semitic, and 
our God is especially a conception drawn from the outside 
world of Nature, although we call him Jehovah, who is espe- 
cially the God of inside motive and conduct. 

For this reason we are fond of Genesis, which portrays our 
God in the guise of a wholesale manufacturer of bird and 
beast and flower, and we flatter ourselves that he exerted the 
most ingenuity and skill in his creation of ourselves after his 
own image. Alas ! embryology tells us that in one stage we 



PHILOSOPHY. 79 



have a tail, and that we resemble the inferior animals too 
closely in our growth in the womb to allow of our claim to 
divine honors on account of our bodily form, while there is no 
need to deceive ourselves with the notion that mind is shared 
by us in no degree with the inferior animals. 

But even here the accounts in Genesis show an incomplete 
idea of the various parts of organized Nature, which of itself 
accounts for their mechanical philosophy. The interdepen- 
dence which we now plainly see to exist between plants and 
animals, and between these and the inorganic world, is itself 
inconsistent with acts of separate and special creation. Nature 
has evidently grown up gradually to be what is to-day through 
immense periods of time and an infinite number of small adap- 
tive and progressive changes. For instance, the earliest land- 
plants were flowerless ; insect-loving flowers and the particular 
insects which assist in fertilizing them seem to have developed 
and grown up side by side, from simpler and more ancient 
kinds of plants and insects, so far as we can gather the facts 
from the fossil remains of both. Special discoveries, contra- 
dicting in details the accounts in Genesis, may be plentifully 
cited, but it is enough that we appreciate the general charac- 
ter of the myth to show its want of correspondence with the 
facts of Geology and Biology as we now understand them. The 
crust of the earth consists largely of the remains of both plants 
and animals, which, when alive, gathered their substance from 
each other, the earth and atmosphere. There is no compre- 
hension of this fact in Genesis, nothing but a distinguishing of 
earth, plant and animal, with a mere indication of their sur- 
roundings apart from their mutual relations, or merely with 
reference to a vegetable food for man and animals. The 
writers of Genesis recognize the different objects as distinct 
pieces in a puzzle, but our better knowledge shows their inter- 
dependence and the way they fit together. 



80 PHILOSOPHY. 



It is true that a great deal which in the Bible is stamped 
with the approval of Jehovah is bad morality as we now under- 
stand morals. Things were done and commanded to be done 
which would not now be ordered, or, if ordered, obeyed. 
The Old Testament shows a transitionary time of moral de- 
velopment, but one in which great lines of advancement for 
humanity and good conduct were laid out. The consequences 
of evil behavior we find also in the Classics as well as in our own 
literature, and I think often in less objectionable shape than 
in the Hebrew Bible. But men will be always convicted by 
their conscience in matters of conduct. And in this respect 
the Israelitic morality has been decisive and saving. Although 
the morality or immorality of certain specific habits and cus- 
toms has changed since the Bible times, and for that matter 
must always be changing as we increase in light and knowl- 
edge, the direction of morality has been laid down by the 
Jews from of old. The hands are to be clean, the mouth void 
of offence and speaking good things, the feet should tread in 
peaceful ways ; our lives devoted to loving that which is right 
and to the succor of our fellowmen. There are no written 
words with the force behind them which the Bible words have 
in this connection, because they were uttered by those who 
had suffered from bad conduct and who early in man's history 
found out what cured their suffering and whose enthusiastic 
mission it was thenceforward to rebuke the world for sin and 
to point out the advantages of righteous conduct. If I sin, 
then thou marked me, and thou wilt not acquit me from mine in- 
iquity ! 

The God of the Israelites, Tahveh, was the God of the fam- 
ily, race, and tribe. Only later, and in the conceptions of the 
prophets, did Jehovah become universal. Christianity is the 
extension of the Hebrew conception of a moral and naturally 
powerful God beyond the limits of the original people who 



PHILOSOPHY. 81 

conceived it. From one side the human mind has arrived at 
monotheism through a perpetual correction of its conceptions 
of Nature and the way in which Nature works. On the other 
side, the monotheistic conception has arisen from an advance 
in the study of humanity and moral self-education. The 
Semitic races have reached monotheism primarily by the lat- 
ter, the Aryan by the former route. Polytheism is gradually 
extirpated from the region lying in Nature outside of mankind 
and from the domain of conduct and the play of the sensual 
faculties. But the workings of the moral and intellectual 
forces are not kept distinct in any one resultant belief. All 
that we can say is, that from the temper and tone of the reli- 
gion, we may decide upon the prevailing direction which has 
called it forth. But equally behind both lies the theistic and 
anthropomorphic conception. And this conception has been 
useful to mankind in acquiring knowledge, both moral and in- 
tellectual. It cannot be expected that it should be thrown 
aside, so long as we obtain individual and collective benefit 
from its use. Certainly in the future it may be laid away as 
useless speculation, but this can only be when we can clearly 
obtain no further benefit from it, and this time is far away. 

On the other hand animism and materialism, the two oppos- 
ing philosophies, stand on a somewhat different footing. 
They are not absolutely coincident w r ith Theism and Atheism. 
Subjective Theism may be entertained while the unity of Na- 
ture and the finality of form and structure under each change 
be completely accepted. There can be no reasonable doubt that 
modern spiritualism is a reversion to a low type of animism. 
The difference between orthodox animism and spiritualism is 
one of degree, acd lies in the greater credulity underlying the 
latter belief. Logically speaking, the evidence in favor of ma- 
terialism is by far the strongest, and with this philosophy in 
full sway, and an abandonment of the whole question between 



82 PHILOSOPHY. 



Theism and Atheism, as impossible of proof or disproof, we 
seem to see the outcome of humanity on these final questions. 
It must be conceded that, while the question of the existence 
of an Unknown God is an open one, and cannot receive posi- 
tive proof or disproof, Matter and Force are sufficient basis for 
all that we perceive with the senses, and that all of which we 
are conscious is brought about by Force and Matter ; whether 
these are essentially different, but in reality correlated, or 
whether their correlation must be taken as proof of their 
identity. 

The nerve and brain forces being constantly improved and 
heightened by the lapse of time and the process of Evolution, 
there has already come a period when the understanding of 
both ourselves and Nature is more perfect. In one view the 
reason why our brain pictures of the exterior world were de- 
fective, was that they were incorrectly perceived. During the 
growth of the brain it could not be otherwise. The feeders of 
the brain, such as the eye and ear, vary in the extent of their 
mechanical perfection and range throughout organized beings. 
A little consideration will show that it must take much time 
and many lives before the brain of man receives the full benefit 
of the increased capacity of its feeders. 

All history assents in a startling manner to the process of 
evolution. The progress in Art, and Science, and Morals is 
attested on every hand, so that it becomes at last self-evident. 
It is not surprising, then, that those who think deeply should 
ask the outcome of present issues, and should endeavor to place 
themselves in the middle stream of human thought, so that 
they may be carried farthest from its feeble beginnings. The 
incomplete, blind, and broken lives, born of ignorance and 
which we cannot fail to notice, should remind us that we are 
all more or less open to the same fate. At every winding and 
corner we should be careful, lest what we think is our proper 
course, end in a closed passage, a fatal beach on which we may 
be hopelessly wrecked. A s we sail on, watchfully, let us cheer 
ourselves with the hope that beyond us lies a goal of perfect 
happiness for humanity, and that out of our own efforts and 
experiences has sprung the possibility of its attainment. 



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